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Observation 
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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


NATIONAL  FLOODMARKS 


N  AT  I  O  N  A  L 
FLOODMARKS 

Week  by  Week  Observations 
on  American  Life 

AS     SEEN     BY 

COLLIER'S 


Edited  by 

MARK  SULLIVAN 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1912,  1913,  1914,  1915, 
By  P.  F.  Collier  &  Son 


Copyright,  1915, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


0^ 


AC5 


FOREWORD 


THE  only  rule  there  has  ever  been  about 
the  editorials  in  Collier's  is  that  each 
should  be  the  sincere  expression  of  either  v 
a  conviction  or  a  mood.  They  have  never  been 
written  to  order.  At  no  time  have  we  felt  that 
the  death  of  the  Akhoond  of  Swat  or  the  fiscal 
policy  of  Siam  must,  willy-nilly,  be  written  about. 
China  becomes  a  republic,  or  may  become  an  em-  " 
pire  again;  if  the  editorial  writer  is  moved  to 
•^  the  expression  of  something  worth  while  on  this 
_  transition,  we  have  an  editorial  on  it;  if  not,  we 
let  China  alone  and  print  an  editorial  on  holly- 
hocks or  on  some  other  subject  that  the  writer 
does  happen  to  have  an  idea  about.  The  poet  De 
Vigny  said:  "The  press  is  a  mouth  forced  to  be  | 
always  open  and  always  speaking.  Hence  it  * 
says  a  thousand  things  more  than  it  has  to  say, 
and  often  wanders  and  exaggerates.  It  would 
be  the  same  if  an  orator,  yes,  even  Demosthenes 
himself,  had  to  speak  without  interruption  all  the 
year  round."  Probably  De  Vigny  was  think- 
ing about  the  daily  press;  anyway,  Collier's 
theory  has  been,  not  to  cover  the  world  nor  the 
week's  news,  but  to  print  editorials  on  subjects 

M 


,  -   r  - 


FOEEWOED 


concerning  which  the  writer  has — or  thinks  he 
has — something  to  say.  Of  course  the  convic- 
tions have  not  always  been  consistent  nor  the 
moods  permanent — for  Collier's  is  human. 

Maee  Sullivan. 


tvi] 


CONTENTS 


I.  PEACE  AND  WAR  pack 

To-Morrow's  Valor  .....  3 

Unnecessary  Risks  ......  4 

War  Costs         .......  6 

Delusions  About  Force  .....  6 

Thirty-Five  Years  Victorious        ...  7 

Union 9 

II.  ON  THE  AMERICAN  PLAN 

What  Democracy  Means  .  .  .  .11 
The  Day  and  The  Flag  .  .  .  .11 
A  More  United  Country  .  .  .  .18 
Treaties  and  Tolls  and  Moral  Tests     .         .       14 

Next! 15 

Wanted:  A  Genius 16 

Poetry  About  Panama 18 

Colorado,  Take   Notice!         ....       20 

Bridge-Builders        .         .         .         .         .         .21 

Resurgent  Ohio       ......       22 

To  the  Workmen  op  Hamilton     ...       23 
The  Greatest  Exposition       ....       24 

Supporting  the   Colleges       ....       25 

A  Land  of  Snow 26 

After  Fifty  Years  .         .         .         .         .28 

Who  Are  the  Americans?      ....       29 

Up  and  Down  East 80 

Apples  of  Gold       ......       81 

Their  America — and  Ours       ....       82 

[vii] 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Plowing  the  Soul  in  Kansas         ...  34 
Nature  at  the  Bat         .         .         .         .         .36 

Weeds  and  Literature     .....  37 

We  Take  Stock 38 

III.  SOME  HUMAN  BEINGS 

Making  Dreams  Come  True    ....  41 

Success     ........  42 

"Just  Call   Me   May"     .....  43 

Colonel  Nelson  of  the  "Star"     ...  44 

The  Death  of  Madero  .....  46 

To  Our  Stenographer     .....  48 

A  King  of  Men       ......  49 

The  Ways  of  Atropos     .....  50 

The  Man  Who  Wrote  "Colonel  Carter  of 

Cartersville" 51 

Big   Tim 52 

A  Miner  of  Good  Metal         ....  54 

Friendship        .......  55 

John  o'  the  Mountains 57 

Jacob    Riis        .......  58 

Eternal  Youth        ......  59 

Gunckel's  Way        ......  60 

The  Great  Heart  of  Ireland         ...  62 

They  Didn't  Like  His  First  Name         .         .  62 

IV.  A  DEMOCRAT  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

W.  W.'8  Conviction 65 

One  New  Jersey  Home            ....  65 

Just  an  Impression  ......  66 

Rotten  Eggs 67 

Two  Years  of  Wilson 68 

At  Home  and  Abroad 70 

Head-On 71 

Iviii] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  United  People     .... 

.      75 

A  Man  at  His  Highest  Point 

.      77 

V.    YOUTH  AND  AGE 

This  Is  Philosophy           .         .         • 

.      79 

On  Keeping  Young           ... 

.      79 

Fullness  of  Years           .         .         . 

.      80 

Tempora  Mutantur          .         .         . 

.      82 

The  Eternal  Surprise     . 

.       83 

VI.    THE  BOOKS  WE  READ 

The  Critic's  Function 85 

Culture    ........       85 

Looking  Forward     .         .         .         .         .         .86 

One  Woman's  Wit   ......       87 

More  About  Jane  Austen         .         .         .         .88 

Which? 90 

Do  You  Read  Poetry?  .....  91 
Another  Literary  Referendum  ...  93 
The  New  Laureate  ....       95 

The  Reader  as  Dramatis  Persona  .  .  96 
Kentucky's   Poet     ......       97 

The  Poet's  Way 98 

The  National  Laundry  .         .         .         .100 

The  Sparrow  and  the  Spout  ....     101 

American  Balladry  .         .         .         .         .102 

The  Great  Divide  .         .         .         .         .         .104 

Geography         .         .         .         .         .         .         .105 

Poetry  They  Couldn't  Write — and  Did  .     106 

"Little  Women" 108 

The   Poet 109 

The  Critics 110 

On  Seeing  Poetry Ill 

M 


CONTENTS 


VII.  TARIFF  TALK  **« 
The  Foundation  Stone  .  .  .  .  .113 
What  "Protection"  Means  .  .  .  .114 
Twenty  Years  From  Now  .  .  .  .119 

VIII.  OUR  TOWN 

The  Olympian 121 

Holmes  in  Blue        .         .         .         .         .         .123 

Profits   and    Decency     .         .         .         .         .125 

The  Passing  of  the  Pale       .    ,    .         .         .126 

The  Minimum  Wage 128 

The  Thing  As  It  Is 130 

The  Case  of  Becker       .         .         .         .         .131 
Passover    ........     132 

Breaking  In 133 

The  Slag  Spot 134 

In  the  Railway  Station          .         .         .         .136 
The  Elements 138 

IX.  POLITICAL  PERSONALITIES 

The  Aftermath 140 

Light   from   History 141 

Gaynor     ........     143 

Mythology        .         .         .         .         .         .         .145 

The  Movies  at  Albany  .         .         .         .146 

Some   Language        .         .         .         .         .         .148 

Brother  Amos  .         .         .         .         .         .149 

Texas  Lion-Heart   .         .         .         .         .         .150 

Lodge  and  Codfish  .         .         .         .         .         .152 

The  Failure  of  Success  .         .         •         .154 

Poetry 156 

Outdoors  and  Indoors 158 

X.  THE  PRESS 

For  Us  Scribes 160 

"Independence"  and  Journalism    .         .         .     160 

w 


CONTEN  TS 


PAGE 

A  Nebraska  Journalist  Speaks  «  .  .  161 
What  Does  a  Newspaper  Mean?  .  .  .  162 
Tainted  News  .         .         .         .         .         .163 

Good  Hunting .164 

Responsibility  .         .         .         .         .         .165 

The  Bible  As  a  Newspaper  Serial  .  .167 
A  Victim  op  Circumstance     .         .         .         .168 

Splash! 169 

But  Why  Should  Hoosiers  Die?     .         .         .170 

Fact  Fictions 172 

A  Kentucky  Metaphor 174 

That  Personal  Note 175 

Religious   Papers 176 

Uncommercial  Advertising      .         .         .         .177 

Playing  on  the  Public 179 

A  Globe  Trotter     ......     181 

English  as  She  Is  Wrote         .         .         .         .181 

For  the  Farmer 182 

Fair  Play 183 

Wanted:  A  Miracle 183 

The  Reporter  .         .         .         .         .         .         .184 


XI.    WE  GO  TO  THE  COUNTRY 


The  Coming  op  Spring    . 

186 

The  Ancient  Call 

187 

Birds  We  Haven't  Known 

188 

The  Hen  of  To-Day 

190 

Green    Things    Growing 

191 

Patter  of   Rain 

192 

Mowing  Time  . 

193 

The  "Value"  of  Corn     . 

.     194 

The  Old-Time  Garden     . 

.     196 

In  Praise  op  Weeds 

.     197 

[xi] 

CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Country  Boy's  Creed      .         .         .         .198 

Autumn 199 

October    ........     201 

Southward  Again 202 

XII.  WE  RELAX 

Vacation  Time 204 

Laughter  .......     206 

Terpsichorean  ......     207 

Breaking  Loose       ......     208 

We're  Off! 208 

A  Bit  of  Coney  Island 210 

Across  the  Table  from  Marse  Henry  .  .212 
For  the  Game's  Ache  .  .  .  .  .213 
Romance  on  the  Links  .         .         .         .         .214 

Leading  vs.  Driving 215 

Sportsmanship  .         .         .         .         .         .216 

Work  and  Play 217 

XIII.  WE  STOP  AND  THINK 

Routine 218 

Dreamers  and  Sleepers 218 

The  Samaritan   Religion         .         .         .         .219 

The  Soul  New-Found 221 

Resurrection    .......  222 

Death  the  Adventure     .....  223 

Members  One    of  Another     ....  225 

The  World  Is  Young  Again     ....  226 

Greed        ........  227 

Winds  of  Doctrine 229 

Destiny              231 

Time 232 

Worry 233 

H 


CONTENTS 

XIV.     THE  LAND  WE  LIVE  BY 

PAGE 

One  American  Farmer     . 

.     235 

Wheat  Prices  and  Bread 

.     237 

Don't  Lean  Against  the  Breeching        « 

.     239 

The  Best  Place  to  Be  Poor  . 

.     240 

Will  $1,000  Do  It? 

.     241 

Do  You  Believe  in  Farming? 

.     243 

Think  op  a  $25,000  Cow! 

.     244 

Woman's  "New  Freedom" 

.     248 

The  Connecting  Link     . 

.     254 

XV.     MONEY  TALKS 

The  Tactics  of  Thomas  .         .         . 

.     255 

Don't  Buy!       ...... 

.     256 

National  and  State  Finance 

.     258 

The  Next  Step         .... 

•     259 

Any  Cure  for  Tax  Eating?     . 

.     261 

Where  the   Money  Goes 

.     262 

A   Fine    Thing          .... 

.     263 

These  Altered  Times 

.     264 

The  Basis  of  Business     . 

.     266 

Our  Own  Walt  Masonry 

.     266 

Tight-Wad   Lawmakers    . 

.     268 

What  Unemployment  Means 

.     269 

Mobilizing  for  Foreign  Trade?     . 

.     271 

XVI.     WHAT  ABOUT  BOOZE? 

[xiii] 


CONTENTS 


PAOE 

Cauoht 274 

Times  Do  Change  ! 275 

Helps  to  College  Temperance      .         .         .  276 

Decadent    Drinkers         .....  277 

Dropping   a   Partner       .....  278 

Poetic  Justice          ......  280 

The  Whole  Story 281 

Railroads  and  Rum 281 

The  Story  of  One  Town         ....  282 

The  Man  Who  Made  Money  Out  of  It         .  283 


XVII.     SHOP  TALK 


On  Breaking  Into  Collier's 

•     285 

Collier's  Is  Unjust 

•     287 

On  Spelling  As  You  Please 

.     288 

Oh,  Shucks!     . 

.     290 

A  Friend  Who  Sticks 

•    291 

From  the  Morning's  Mail 

.     292 

The  Omniscient  One 

.     294 

Our  Most  Faithful  Reader 

.     295 

The  Best 

.     297 

XVIII.     HERE  ARE  LADIES 

Matching  the  Men 298 

The  Golden  Hour 298 

On   Going  Courting 299 

A  Plea  for  Stew     .         .         .         .         .         .801 

What  Women  Expect 302 

The   Militants   and   "Sex   Antagonism"         .  303 

The  Certainty  of  Suffrage    ....  306 

Science  and  Love    ......  307 

Women's  Work 309 

Guarding  the  Girls 309 

[riv] 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Leadership 311 

The  Overpaid  Girl 312 

The    World    Moves — and    Women    Help    to 
Move  It        ......         .     313 

Suffrage  Heroes      .         .         .         .         .         .314 

Babies  and  "Help"  .         .         .         .         .         .314 

Cooking  Schools  and  Bridge  .         .         .317 


XIX.     MATTERS  OF  BUSINESS 


Room  at  the  Top     . 

A  Lesson  from  Below 

The  Highroad 

A  Railway  That  Knows  How 

The  Basic  Service  of  Railroading 

What  Do  We  Want? 

Steel  Cars  and  Slaughter 

The  New  Haven  Mess 

Monopoly  and  Empire 

Regulation  and  Taxes 

Industrial  Justice  . 

Nothing  in   It 

Our  Demoralized  Courts 

The  Discouragement  of  Thrift 

Real  Currency  Reform 

How  Much   Pay?     . 

"Sheer  Weight  of  Money"     . 

Prices  Still  Will  Soar  . 

The   Greatest   Question 

gompers  and  personal  rlghts 

The  Curse  of  Small  Business 

A  War  of  Our  Own 

"The  Hound  of  Heaven" 

Getting  Rid  of  Toil        .        . 

w 


319 
319 
321 
321 
323 
324 
325 
326 
328 
329 
331 
332 
333 
334 
336 
337 
338 
339 
340 
341 
343 
344 
346 
847 


CONTENTS 


XX.     FORWARD !  page 

Looking  Ahead         ......  348 

Brimstone  Uplifters 348 

"Fallen  on  Evil  Days" 350 

Insurance  and  a  Sonnet         ....  350 

Finding  Out 853 

'    An  Interlocking  Boss — and  the  Directors  .  354 

Milestones        .......  355 

Headway 356 

Dayton  Asks  Goethals  to  Be  City  Manager  357 

A  Landmark 357 

Watch  Oregon 858 

Lux 359 


XXI.     HOME  MATTERS 

Is  That  So? 860 

Children 360 

Are  You  Cheerful  To-day?    ....  362 

Matters  of  Taste 363 

j   Union  Hours  for  the  Wife     ....  364 

Mothers  As  Teachers      .....  365 

Santa  Claus  and  Others        ....  367 

How  About   Sex?     ......  368 

Hospitality       .......  369 

A  Few  of  Him  Would  Make  a  Muckle  .         .  870 


XXII.    THE  PLAY-ACTORS 

A  Forecast 373 

The   New  Generation 375 

A  Missionary    .......  376 

Sarah 377 

Here's  Hoping 378 

[xvi] 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Wild  West 879 

What  Is  Immoral? 880 

We  See  "Hamlet" 882 

XXIII.     THAT  MARRIED  STATE 

A  Certain  Human  Relation    ....  884 

Along  Toward  June 885 

Adolescence  and  Colic  .....  886 

Fatherhood  and  Motherhood         .         .         .  887 

•»   Of  Loving  and  Telling 889 


[xvii] 


NATIONAL  FLOODMARKS 


I 

PEACE   AND   WAR 


TO-MORROW'S   VALOR 

WE  are  neither  dreamers  nor  Utopians.  The 
roar  of  the  ultra-modern  city  is  all 
about ;  the  rumble  of  the  presses  fills  our 
ears.  Yet,  ever  and  again,  amid  the  current  talk 
of  wars,  of  armament  and  disarmament,  comes  up 
a  vision  dear  to  the  late  William  James,  whose 
ideas,  by  the  way,  are  far  more  familiar  in  France 
and  in  England  than  in  his  own  country.  When 
James  set  forth  his  vision  of  "armies  of  peace," 
the  natural  query  was:  But  what  about  armies 
for  police  purposes?  James  did  not,  nor  do  we, 
deny  such  a  need  at  present.  But  surely  the  phi- 
losopher was  right  in  regarding  as  preposterous 
the  idea  that  what  is  called  courage  or  martial 
valor  can  be  fostered  only  by  a  careful  training 
in  killing  and  destruction.  Who  is  in  love  with 
war?  So  long  as  the  Balkan  peoples  were  fight- 
ing the  Turk  for  a  principle,  for  Christianity,  as 
they  said,  the  world  was  moderately  interested. 
When  they  started  cutting  each  other  to  pieces  in 
a  spirit  of  greedy  quarreling,  most  of  us  turned 

[3] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

away  in  horrified  disgust.  James  foresaw  a  time 
when  our  young  men — indeed,  all  our  able-bodied 
men — would  render  national  service  in  the  work 
of  construction  instead  of  destruction,  in  build- 
ing up  the  land  instead  of  burning  and  devastat- 
ing. Then,  too,  without  the  aid  of  guns  or  shrap- 
nel, would  be  taught  the  power  of  endurance, 
the  salient  blessing  of  self-sacrifice.  Why  not? 
We  denied  being  Utopians,  but  we  all  of  us  are 
just  that,  in  a  measure.  For  Utopia,  as  has  been 
brilliantly  said,  is  the  one  country  at  which  hu- 
manity is  always  landing. 


UNNECESSARY    RISKS 

VARIOUS  individuals  have  disparaged  the 
motives  of  the  men  fighting  in  Europe 
against  the  Kaisers  and  the  Turk,  and  one  loose 
thinker  has  called  this  war  of  nationalism  against 
the  would-be  world  conqueror  "the  causeless 
war."  This  same  politician  has  cautioned  his  fel- 
low countrymen  against  taking  "unnecessary 
risks."  Now,  it  is  hard  for  us  to  be  patient  when 
we  read  such  rubbish  in  the  press.  Without  "un- 
necessary risks"  history  would  be  the  record  of 
life  among  the  invertebrates.  Without  "unneces- 
sary risks"  there  would  be  no  Leonid  as  in  his- 
tory, no  Columbus,  no  Champlain,  no  Wolfe, 

M 


PEACE    AND     WAE 


no  Nelson,  no  Emmet,  no  Washington,  no 
Lafayette,  no  American  Republic.  Without 
the  taking  of  "unnecessary  risks"  there  would 
have  been  no  Lincoln.  When  the  men  who  fol- 
lowed Garibaldi  from  Rome  asked  him  what 
their  reward  should  be,  they  were  answered: 
"Hunger  and  thirst,  forward  marches,  battles, 
and  death."  Garibaldi  and  his  Thousand  took 
unnecessary  risks — and  freed  Italy!  In  Ibsen's 
play,  when  Brand  had  led  his  men  halfway  to  the 
heights  they  halted — but  this  was  Brand's  speech 
to  them: 

How  long  the  war  will  last? 

As  long  as  life!   .    .    . 

What  will  you  gain?     A  will  that's  whole, 

A  soaring  faith,  a  single  soul, 

The  willingness  to  lose,  that  gave 

Itself  rejoicing  to  the  grave; 

A  crown  of  thorns  on  every  brow; 

That  is  the  wage  you're  earning  now ! 

Which  is  better,  the  patriotism  of  Garibalidi, 
the  idealism  of  a  defeated  Brand — or  the  soft 
counsel  of  these  moderns  who  set  comfort  above 
country,  saving  themselves  above  spending  them- 
selves? This  country  does  not  want  war,  but  if 
we  thought  it  incapable  of  war  zeal — once 
war  again  became  our  national  necessity — we 
should  pray  to  God  that  He  make  us,  in  our 
next  incarnation,  Belgians,  Serbs,  or  French- 
men. 

[5] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

— — j 

WAR   COSTS 

THOSE  who  predict  a  ruined  Europe  after 
the  War  of  the  Nations  must  remember 
that  this  depends  partly  upon  whether  or  not  the 
present  struggle  settles  the  armament  question. 
Europe  now  spends  over  one  thousand  million 
dollars  per  annum  on  the  war  business.  If  part 
or  all  of  this  can  be  saved  it  will  go  far  in  the 
work  of  restoration.  Furthermore,  war  is  a  tre- 
mendous inspirer  of  energy,  as  France  proved 
after  1870  and  as  we  proved  after  the  Civil  War. 
Science  and  industry  will  go  forward  even  faster 
when  freed  of  some  of  the  burden  of  the  military 
fanatics.    Our  civilization  is  not  to  be  overturned. 


DELUSIONS   ABOUT   FORCE 

COLONEL  ROOSEVELT  once  expressed 
a  contemptuous  opinion  of  young  Chris- 
tians who  have  shoulders  like  a  hock  bottle. 
Roosevelt  himself  has  what  men  call  f  orce — has 
it  physically  and  morally — and  that  is  why  he  is 
Roosevelt.  But  here  in  America  we  have  an 
opposed  school  of  thought — the  Friends  of  Flab- 
biness.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  organized  a  good 
many  of  them  into  peace  societies,  and  pays  their 
talking  expenses.    Now,  of  the  two  fallacies  that 

[6] 


PEACE    AND     WAR 


keep  cropping  out  about  force  as  a  factor  in  the 
lives  of  nations,  one  is  as  witless  as  the  other. 
German  thoroughness,  skill,  bravery,  and  brutal- 
ity are  proving  (as  they  have  proved  before)  that 
force  doesn't  settle  everything  in  this  world.  The 
Potsdam  officials  who  are  trying  the  present  ex- 
periment with  blood  and  iron  may  stand  in  Bis- 
marck's boots  till  they  ossify — they  will  never 
have  his  brains. 

The  opposite  delusion  is  that  "force  settles 
nothing."  Some  interviewer  attributed  this  empty 
phrase  to  Jane  Addams  upon  her  recent  return 
from  Europe.  Perhaps  she  did  say  it,  but  it  is 
empty  just  the  same.  Ask  any  social  reformer 
or  historian  who  has  heard  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution ;  ask  any  Italian  old  enough  to  know  about 
Garibaldi;  ask  any  native  of  Poland — land  of 
the  Broken  Heart.  This  is  not  a  world  of  auto- 
matic righteousness,  and  our  only  real  excuse  for 
being  here  is  that  our  strength  may  in  some  way 
help  to  force  the  cause  of  better  things  to  victory. 


THIRTY-FIVE    YEARS    VICTORIOUS 

MOLE  TEQUOP  ("the  man  who  talks 
with  his  hands")  has  a  record  of  victory 
extending  over  thirty-five  years.  In  the  early 
spring  of  1878,  as  a  Second  Lieutenant  fresh 

[7] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABKS 

from  West  Point,  he  overcame  the  Cheyennes  in 
the  Black  Hills.  The  Crows  were  conquered  at 
Mizpah  Creek  the  same  year.  Other  encounters, 
all  uniformly  successful,  were  with  Geronimo's 
Apaches,  with  the  Navajos  and  Utes  of  the  Four 
Corners  country,  the  Hopis  beyond  the  Painted 
Desert,  the  Moros  of  Sulu  in  the  Philippines,  and, 
more  recently,  with  the  Navajos  on  the  Beautiful 
Mountain.  The  names  are  sufficiently  romantic. 
The  Government  saved  a  lot  of  powder  on  these 
"battles,"  for  not  a  shot  was  fired.  At  most  of 
them  no  troops  were  present.  Success  came  be- 
cause General  Hugh  L.  Scott  (that  is  Mole 
Tequop's  real  name)  prefers  to  know  and  study 
people  in  place  of  shooting  them.  He  found  out 
the  feelings  and  grievances  of  the  Indians,  and 
dealt  with  them  in  honesty  and  fairness.  The  re- 
sults were  honorable,  permanent,  and  inexpen- 
sive. Can  we  say  as  much  for  war  after  some 
four  thousand  years  of  recorded  experience? 
War  is  merely  the  deadly  and  extravagant  pur- 
chase of  fear.  Why  not  train  a  few  disciples  of 
General  Scott  for  our  diplomatic  service?  Un- 
less this  is  done,  it  may  some  day  be  the  epitaph 
of  our  modern  civilization  that  it  used  civilized 
methods  in  dealing  with  the  savages  and  savage 
methods  in  dealing  with  the  civilized. 


[8] 


PEACE    AND     WAS 


UNION 

AT  Gettysburg  it  was  proposed  to  supersede 
the  organizations  of  Confederate  veterans 
and  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  by 
founding  in  their  place,  on  this  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  the  Civil  War's  greatest  battle,  an  order 
of  the  United  Veterans  of  America.  This  has 
already  been  accomplished  in  spirit.  Not  only 
is  our  country  really  and  definitely  reunited,  but 
the  country  knows  it,  and  the  men  who  battled 
in  '63  most  enthusiastically  know  it.  It  is  no 
temper  of  noisy  militarism  that  the  body-tattered 
veterans  of  the  two  facing  armies  have  met  on 
the  blood-soaked  battlefield  fifty  years  after. 
Their*  spirit  is  patriotic,  but  it  is  also  peace  lov- 
ing. These  men,  whichever  side  they  fought  on, 
know  full  well  what  is  the  cost  of  a  great  war. 
To  be  sure,  they  would  not  have  their  sons  and 
grandsons  spare  themselves  that  heavy  cost  if  an 
overwhelming  issue  and  a  great  necessity  should 
confront  them.  We  have  not  yet  reached  the 
stage  in  civilization  when  war  may  safely  be  re- 
garded as  a  purely  historic  institution.  We  have, 
however,  reached  the  point  at  which  it  is  our  duty, 
as  shipping  clerks  or  bankers,  preachers  or  mili- 
tiamen, grocers  or  journalists,  to  recognize  war's 
essential  horror  and  criminality  when  entered 
upon  out  of  vainglory,  greed,  or  mere  momentary 

[9] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

irritation.  War  ought  to  remain  the  last  resort, 
whether  waged  with  fists  or  bullets.  Probably 
the  country  would  feel  this  all  the  more  intensely 
if  it  were  not  for  the  tiresome  tirades  of  profes- 
sional peacemongers — both  the  disinterested  vol- 
unteers and  the  zealous  pensioners  of  Mr.  An- 
drew Carnegie. 


[10] 


II 

ON  THE  AMERICAN  PLAN 

WHAT   DEMOCRACY   MEANS 

PUBLIC  opinion  is  like  steam  in  more  ways 
than  one.    Repressed  for  any  great  length 
of  time,  it  is  likely  to  prove  explosive. 
Granted  a  safety  valve  (sometimes  called  ballot 
boxes),  it  is  discovered  to  be  beneficently,  creat- 
ively powerful. 


THE   DAY  AND   THE   FLAG 

THE  Fourth  of  July  is,  above  all  others,  the 
day  of  our  flag — "the  flag  that  is  like  a 
flower,"  as  the  Chinese  said  when  our  banner  was 
seen  at  Canton.  The  spirit  of  day  and  flag  alike 
has  never  been  more  beautifully  expressed  than 
in  these  lines  from  the  speech  that  Secretary  of 
the  Interior  Franklin  K.  Lane  made  to  the 
clerks  of  his  department  on  Flag  Day: 

Then  came  a  great  shout  from  the  flag: 

"The  work  that  we  do  is  the  making  of  the  real  flag. 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

I  am  but  its  shadow.  I  am  whatever  you  make  me,  noth- 
ing more.  I  am  your  belief  in  yourself,  your  dream  of 
what  a  people  may  become.  Sometimes  I  am  strong  with 
pride,  when  men  do  an  honest  work,  fitting  the  rails  to- 
gether truly.  Sometimes  I  droop,  for  then  purpose  has 
gone  from  me,  and  cynically  I  play  the  coward.  But  al- 
ways I  am  all  that  you  hope  to  be  and  have  the  courage  to 
try  for.  I  am  song  and  fear,  struggle  and  panic,  and  en- 
nobling hope.  I  am  the  day's  work  of  the  weakest  man,  and 
the  largest  dream  of  the  most  daring.  I  am  the  Consti- 
tution and  the  courts,  statutes  and  statute  makers,  soldier 
and  dreadnought,  drayman  and  street  sweep,  cook,  coun- 
selor, and  clerk.  I  am  the  battle  of  yesterday  and  the  mis- 
take of  to-morrow.  I  am  the  mystery  of  the  men  who  do 
without  knowing  why.  I  am  no  more  than  what  you  be- 
lieve me  to  be,  and  I  am  all  that  you  believe  I  can  be.  I 
am  what  you  make  me,  nothing  more.  My  stars  and  my 
stripes  are  your  dreams  and  your  labors.  •  They  are  bright 
with  cheer,  brilliant  with  courage,  firm  with  faith,  because 
you  have  made  them  so  out  of  your  hearts,  for  you  are  the 
makers  of  the  flag,  and  it  is  well  that  you  glory  in  the 
making." 

In  "Who's  Who  in  America,"  Secretary 
Lane's  biography  begins  like  this:  "Born 
Prince  Edward  Island,  Canada,  July  15,  1864. 
.  .  .  Removed  to  California  in  early  childhood; 
educated  at  the  University  of  California,  1886." 

Secretary  Lane  is  an  American. 


[12] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 


A   MORE    UNITED    COUNTRY 

LESS  than  forty  years  ago  two  fanatical 
young  experimenters  heard  the  world's 
first  telephone  conversation  over  a  wire  stretched 
between  the  rooms  of  their  Boston  workshop. 
Last  month  the  same  two  men,  Alexander  Gra- 
ham Bell  and  Thomas  A.  Watson,  formally 
opened  the  first  transcontinental  telephone  line 
between  New  York  and  San  Francisco,  and 
heard  each  other  much  more  clearly  than  they 
did  that  first  time.  The  speed  and  power  of 
modern  engineering  genius  was  never  more  strik- 
ingly shown,  and  the  details  are  as  remarkable 
as  the  feat  itself.  Imagine  the  human  voice  trans- 
mitted through  740  tons  of  copper  and  across  the 
entire  United  States  in  about  one-fifteenth  of  a 
second.  Imagine  talking  3,400  miles  to  your 
friend  over  a  "phantom  circuit"  which  is  nothing 
at  all  but  the  abstract  relation  between  four  real 
wires!  The  new  repeaters,  which  "boost"  the 
conversation  every  thousand  miles  or  so,  have  left 
no  known  limit  to  the  land  distance  over  which 
one  may  talk. 

The  chief  engineer,  Mr.  John  Joseph  Carty, 
hints  very  cheerfully  of  telephoning  to  China 
some  day.  Why  not?  The  limit  was  fifty  miles 
when  he  began,  and  they  have  added  4,700  miles 
to  that  already.    But  greater  than  these  facts, 

[13] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

and  more  important  than  prophecies,  are  the  cour- 
age and  brains  and  faithful  patient  work  of  the 
many  who  have  labored  together  to  draw  our 
whole  United  States  within  the  compass  of  a 
single  human  voice. 

By  these  things  is  our  country  united — and 
justified. 


TREATIES  AND  TOLLS  AND  MORAL  TESTS 

DID  we  go  too  far  when  we  said  that  the 
man  who  can  read  the  English  language 
as  used  in  the  Hay-Pauncefote  Treaty,  and  still 
maintain  that  we  have  the  right  to  exempt  our 
coastwise  ships  from  Panama  Canal  tolls,  "there- 
by proclaims  his  own  moral  status"?  Several 
of  our  readers  seem  pained  by  what  they  regard 
as  an  impugnment  of  their  moral  status,  and 
have  protested  that  they  believe  in  the  free-tolls 
law,  and  claim  both  the  ability  to  read  English 
and  honesty  of  purpose.  That  acute  ethical 
philosopher,  William  Marion  Reedy  of  the  St. 
Louis  "Mirror,"  agrees  with  us.  "Against  the 
simple  moral  proposition  of  the  President's  canal- 
tolls  message,"  says  the  "Mirror,"  "all  the  talk 
about  running  the  canal  to  please  ourselves  is 
mere  bluster.  You  can't  beat  the  Golden  Rule." 
The  New  York  "World"  calls  our  utterance  "a 

[14] 


ON     THE    AMERICAN     PLAN 

concise  and  correct  statement  of  the  case."  What 
Collier's  said  has  been  widely  approved  and  not 
severely  criticised  by  many  people.  And  yet  we 
are  not  inclined  to  stand  on  this  record.  Maybe 
we  were  wrong  after  all.  Minds  are  such  curious 
things !  Martin  Luther  honestly  believed  that 
the  devil  appeared  to  him,  and  he  threw  his  ink- 
stand at  the  adversary.  Edmund  Burke  hon- 
estly believed  that  the  rotten  borough  system 
of  England  was  essential  to  the  existence  of 
the  nation.  William  of  Orange  believed  he 
had  a  moral  right  to  give  away  the  crown 
lands  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  to  his  Dutch 
friends.  William  Pitt,  under  honest  convic- 
tion, kept  himself  in  power  by  the  most  gigantic 
system  of  corruption  ever  known.  Honest  law- 
yers argue  acutely  for  the  wrong  sides  of  cases. 
Many  honest  people  believe  that  we  may  exempt 
American  coastwise  ships  from  canal  tolls  with- 
out committing  any  act  of  bad  faith.    We  don't. 


NEXT! 

THE  Tory  mind  is  thoroughly  committed  to 
the  idea  that  the  people,  through  their 
government,  can  never  do  anything  well ;  for  ef- 
ficiency they  must  call  upon  private  individuals, 
actuated  by  a  desire  for  great  financial  gain.    Yet 

[15] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

even  the  most  blinded  Tory  must  admit  that  never 
in  history  was  an  engineering  feat  accomplished 
with  such  splendid  efficiency,  such  resistless  en- 
ergy, such  f  arsighted  economy,  as  the  digging  of 
the  Panama  Canal  by  the  force  under  Colonel 
Goethals.  And  why  cannot  this  same  efficiency, 
energy,  and  economy  accomplish  results  just  as 
creditable  in  the  building  of  an  Alaskan  rail- 
road ?  Why  turn  Alaskan  railroads  over  to  finan- 
ciers eager  for  private  gain  when  Colonel  Goeth- 
als and  his  splendid  force  are  now  ready  for  the 
next  job? 


WANTED:   A    GENIUS 

STILL  your  arguments  about  the  tariff;  for- 
get for  a  moment  all  your  private  business. 
A  great  undertaking  that  defied  the  resources  of 
the  Suez  Canal  maker  and  the  Old  World's  great- 
est republic  is  brought  to  triumphant  conclusion 
by  your  Federal  Government.  Without  whisper 
of  slander  or  hint  of  graft,  your  engineers  have 
conquered  a  deadly  climate,  brought  sufficient 
labor  into  the  jungle,  drained  and  leveled  and 
erected,  until  the  Panama  Canal  is  become  a  fact. 
The  dry  excavation  was  finished  ten  days  ahead  of 
schedule ;  dredging  remains,  but  with  the  waters 
of  the  two  oceans  flowing  into  the  great  locks  the 

[16] 


ON     THE    AMERICAN     PLAN 

end  is  within  grasp.  The  Panama  Canal  is  one 
of  the  world's  nine  wonders ;  to  gaze  upon  it  is  to 
feel  like  the  "watcher  of  the  skies" 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez,  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise — 

Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

Have  we  no  poet  to  chant  this  achievement  of 
French  imagining,  American  perseverance,  and 
many-nationed  muscle?  He  need  not  undertake 
to  make  official  history  of  his  poems ;  Keats  in  his 
sonnet  unjustly  named  Cortez  instead  of  Bal- 
boa, but  that  scarcely  affects  the  grandeur  of  the 
poetry.  The  Panamanian  scene  is  as  rich  in  leg- 
end and  history  as  it  is  in  vegetation ;  buccaneers 
have  anchored  in  the  sleepy  old  Spanish  ports  of 
the  Isthmus;  Bernhardt  acted  in  a  gala  per- 
formance at  the  Panama  Theatre  when  poor  old 
De  Lesseps  set  to  work  digging  the  trenches 
Goethals  was  to  complete ;  all  the  races  have  met 
and  mingled  and  diced  and  prayed  and  cursed 
and  labored  in  the  city  made  clean  by  Gorgas 
and  his  men.  State  socialism  has  had  a  partial 
trial  in  Uncle  Sam's  avuncular  administration 
of  his  Canal  Zone.  The  theme  is  tremendous; 
your  poet  would  have  an  epic  on  his  hands  unless 
he  chose  just  one  side  of  it  all.  Here  a  few  of  its 
minor  incidents  are  noted — nothing  of  the  tre- 

[17] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

mendous  battle  with  Nature,  nothing  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  victory.  Who  can  make  a  great  poem 
out  of  this  great  adventure?  Will  it  be  some  poet 
whom  we  already  know  and  love,  or  will  some 
youngster  burst  full  fledged  into  greatness,  soar- 
ing high  upon  a  large  imagination?  Some  of  the 
greatest  poems  in  the  past  have  been  paid  for  only 
in  posterity's  admiration.  We  hope  that  the  dig- 
ging of  the  Panama  Canal  will  evoke  a  poem  as 
great  as  any  occasional  poem  in  the  past — and  if 
it  does  we  shall  see  to  it  that  its  author  receives 
a  bigger  check  for  it  than  Milton  did  for  "Para- 
dise Lost." 


POETRY   ABOUT   PANAMA 

EVIDENTLY  Emerson  was  not  alone  in 
holding  that  "the  only  poetry  is  history — 
could  we  tell  it  right."  There  is,  at  least,  a  good 
deal  of  comment  upon  our  editorial  "Wanted: 
A  Genius."  An  amusing  letter  comes  to  us 
from  one  of  the  poets  who  has  for  his  part  already 
celebrated  Panama  in  song — and  in  CoUiefs. 
Says  Berton  Braley: 

I  have  been  trying  to  decide  whether  the  man  who  wrote 
that  editorial  does  not  read  Collier's  Weekly,  or  if  he  sim- 
ply wanted  to  make  a  neat  backhand  slap  at  me. 

[18] 


ON     THE    AMERICAN     PLAN 

No,  no,  we  do  read  Collier's;  read  it  in  man- 
uscript, in  proof,  in  the  finished  magazine.  Yes, 
yes,  we  do  like  Mr.  Braley's  verse,  or  it  wouldn't 
be  published  here ;  but  poets  are  so  touchy !  Just 
to  prove  our  appreciation,  here  is  the  catchy  way 
Mr.  Braley's  "At  Your  Service"  opens  in  our 
issue  of  May  31 : 

Here  we  are,  gentlemen;  here's  the  whole  gang  of  us, 

Pretty  near  through  with  the  job  we  are  on; 
Size  up  our  work — it  will  give  you  the  hang  of  us — 

South  to  Balboa  and  north  to  Colon. 
Yes,  the  canal  is  our  letter  of  reference; 

Look  at  Culebra  and  glance  at  Gatun; 
What  can  we  do  for  you — got  any  preference, 

Wireless  to  Saturn  or  bridge  to  the  moon? 

But  that  is  not  all.  George  D.  Hendrick- 
son  of  Philadelphia  wounds  us  cruelly  in  writ- 
ing: 

To  ignore  Whitman's  "Passage  to  India,"  bearing  on 
the  subject  as  it  does,  betrays  an  unpardonable  lack  of 
knowledge  of  the  world's  best  literature. 

And  some  one  in  Cumberland,  Md.,  declares: 

Your  editorial,  "Wanted :  A  Genius,"  is  already  answered 
in  Percy  Mackaye's  "Panama  Hymn,"  published  in  the 
April  number  of  the  "North  American  Review." 

Right !  In  its  address  to  Him  who  is  "Lord  of 
the  Sundering  Land  and  Deep,"  that  poem 
strikes  the  true  note  of  grandeur: 

[19] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

For  thee  hath  glaring  Cyclops  sweat, 
And  Atlas  groaned,  and  Hercules 

For  thee  his  iron  sinews  set, 

And  thou  wast  lord  of  Rameses. 

Till  now  they  pause,  to  watch  thy  hand 

Lead  forth  the  first  Leviathan 
Through  mazes  of  the  jungled  land, 

Submissive  to  the  will  of  man: 

Submissive  through  the  will  of  us 

To  thine,  the  universal  will, 
That  leads,  divine  and  devious, 

To  world  communions  vaster  still. 

Poets  and  canal  diggers  are  not  so  different, 
after  all.  Dipping  into  one  of  the  old  numbers 
of  Collier's  we  find  there  this  forgotten  sentence : 

There  is  one  Greek  word  for  "I  do"  from  which  we  get 
the  word  practical,  and  another  Greek  word  for  "I  do" 
from  which  we  get  the  word  poet. 

And  the  San  Diego  "Tribune"  adds: 

Perhaps  the  Panama  Canal  is  in  itself  an  epic  that  could 
not  be  improved  upon  by  other  poets  than  those  who  have 
written  it  already  in  the  rocks  and  jungles. 


COLORADO,    TAKE    NOTICE! 

THE  State  of  Ohio  was  once  covered  by- 
forests .  Then  there  were  no  devastating 
floods.  The  forests  were  cut  away,  cut  indis- 
criminately,   ruthlessly,    ignorantly.     Now    we 

[20] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 

have  the  tragedy  at  Dayton  and  other  lesser 
ones  every  year.  If  a  few  square  miles  of  care- 
fully tended  forests  had  been  left  at  strategic 
points  around  the  headwaters  of  the  various  riv- 
ers and  streams  of  Ohio,  we  should  not  be  mourn- 
ing these  hundreds  of  dead  or  regretting  the 
millions  of  money.  This  is  part  of  what  is  meant 
by  conservation. 


BRIDGE-BUILDERS 

THEY  follow  reporters,  precede  relief 
trains,  and  are  on  the  spot  almost  before  the 
crest  of  the  flood  has  gone  down.  They  were 
all  over  Ohio,  spinning  their  quick  webs  across 
torrents  it  seemed  nothing  could  cross.  At 
Zanesville,  where  the  Muskingum  rose  nearly 
fifty-two  feet,  there  is  a  dam,  and  at  the  very 
foot  of  this  dam  was  a  heavy  railroad  bridge. 
The  flood  carried  it  out  and  bent  its  steel  girders 
like  so  much  soft  wire.  While  the  muddy  water 
was  still  thundering  over,  a  steam  crane  leaned 
out  from  the  solid  shore  and  delicately  lowered 
a  big  hairpin-shaped  frame  of  twelve-by-twelve 
timber.  Weighted  with  railroad  iron,  it  dipped 
to  the  bottom,  was  lifted  out,  measured,  sawed, 
dipped  again.  It  is  nice  work,  so  fitting  one 
of  these  "bents"  that  the  top  will  be  level  and 
ready  to  receive  beams  run  out  from  the  shore. 

[21] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

Once  in  place,  stringers  run  out  and  bolted,  ties 
and  rails  put  down,  the  crane  edged  out  a  little 
farther,  and  down  went  another  "bent."  Be- 
tween this  and  the  first  a  heavy  scow  was  lowered 
to  the  water,  and  suspended  in  it  from  the  crane's 
chains,  with  the  flood  roaring  about  them  and 
splashing  them  with  spray,  men  hauled  the 
dangling  "bent"  into  position  at  the  bottom,  a 
winch  engine  pulled  it  taut  at  the  top,  and  the 
second  beam  was  bolted  on.  And  so,  step  by 
step,  the  bridge  crept  across  the  torrent  as 
surely,  neatly  almost,  as  if  no  water  were  there. 
No  interviews  or  medals  for  the  construction 
gang.  Dangling  over  what  might  be  Niagara's 
rapids,  with  helpless  idlers  watching  open- 
mouthed  from  the  shore,  they  fight  the  river 
with  their  steel-and-steam  giant  and  their  own 
nimble  skill,  and  at  night  return,  unheralded  and 
unknown,  to  some  side-street  hotel.  There  they 
eat  everything  on  the  bill  of  fare,  and,  red-faced, 
good-natured  boys,  sprawl  before  the  natural-gas 
fireplace  "like  Mars,  a-smokin'  their  pipes  and 
cigars." 


RESURGENT   OHIO 

THERE  could  be  no  comment  more  fitting 
upon  the  close  of  a  period  of  paralyzing 
calamity  than  these  two  spontaneous  expressions 

[22] 


ON    THE    AMERICAN    PLAN 

of  a  stricken  community.  The  first  placard  was 
run  off  the  presses  of  the  local  newspaper  while 
the  pressroom  was  still  under  water: 


TO  THE  WORKMEN  OF  HAMILTON 

Do  not  leave  Hamilton.  There  are  citizens  here  who 
will  help  you  to  get  the  money  to  rebuild  and  refurnish 
your  homes;  work  will  be  plentiful;  opportunity  is  no- 
where greater  than  right  here.  In  the  days  to  come  you 
will  be  proud  to  number  yourself  among  those  who  stood 
by  and  helped  to  build  the  bigger,  better,  more  prosperous 
Hamilton. 

The  second  placard  appeared  in  the  window  of 
Hamilton's  leading  bank,  the  floor  of  which  was 
still  littered  with  flood  wreckage: 

Noah  was  six  hundred  years  old  before  he  learned  to 
build  the  ark.     Don't  lose  your  grip. 

Any  poet  or  historian  who  seeks  that  intan- 
gible thing  which  Kipling  called  the  American 
Spirit  will  find  it  here  as  nearly  as  it  is  possible 
to  reduce  it  to  words.  These  expressions  came 
from  typical  American  communities  at  a  time 
when  calamity  had  made  them  without  conscious- 
ness of  self  or  of  others.  The  buoyant,  uncal- 
culating,  slightly  boastful  optimism,  and  the 
humor  that  would  have  "matched  with  destiny 

[23] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

for  beers,"  even  at  a  moment  when  destiny  was 
in  a  pretty  terrifying  temper,  are  naive,  sponta- 
neous, and  native  to  America. 


THE   GREATEST   EXPOSITION 

WITH  half  the  world  at  war,  San  Francisco 
opens  the  latest  of  our  celebrations  of 
the  arts  of  peace.  Every  building  was  com- 
pleted, almost  every  exhibit  in  place,  the  expo- 
sition was  free  of  debt  and  had  aligned  forty- 
two  countries  in  this  festival  of  the  works  of 
man  when  President  Wilson  freed  the  electrical 
impulse  which  formally  set  the  wheels  in  motion. 
We  have  had  fairs  before  this,  but  none  so  beau- 
tiful, none  so  nobly  placed,  none  that  so  appeals 
to  the  imagination.  The  canal  at  Panama  has 
finished  the  work  of  the  pioneer,  our  Western 
coast  has  come  into  its  own,  and  here  is  a  great 
proof  of  the  fact.  The  variety  and  scope  of 
our  eager  nation  is  to  be  seen  here  and  seen  in 
its  relation,  not  only  to  the  achievements  of  our 
older  communities,  but  also  to  the  promise  of 
the  Far  East  and  of  South  America.  Those 
who  can  get  to  San  Francisco  this  year  will  be 
rewarded  not  so  much  by  an  increase  of  their 
geographical  knowledge  or  by  the  thrilling 
beauty  of  Jules  Gueein's  marvelous  decora- 
tions or  by  the  wonders  of  California's  golden 

[24] 


ON     THE    AMERICAN     PLAN 

days  as  by  the  vision  of  what  our  country  is  to 
become  as  the  free,  conquering,  democratic  spirit 
of  the  pioneer  goes  forth  to  win  its  place  and  do 
its  work  in  the  world  that  is  to  be. 


SUPPORTING   THE    COLLEGES 

PRESIDENT  VAN  HISE  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Wisconsin  once  turned  the  laugh 
against  some  of  his  Eastern  confreres  at  an  aca- 
demic conference  by  saying  mildly  that  he  would 
rather  hang  on  to  the  chin  whiskers  of  farmers 
than  to  the  coat  tails  of  plutocrats.  It  is  a  more 
dignified  performance  and  keeps  the  line  of  obli- 
gation clearer.  But  endowments  come  in  time 
even  to  State  universities.  These  gifts  are  usu- 
ally in  the  form  of  securities,  or  are  so  invested 
later  on  by  the  trustees,  and  will  be  found  on 
analysis  to  consist  of  claims  on  the  industry,  loy- 
alty, and  skill  of  other  men.  The  college  student 
often  pays  tuition  fees  of  one  sort  or  another, 
but  these  seldom,  if  ever,  amount  to  one-half  as 
much  as  the  college  is  spending  on  each  such  stu- 
dent. The  other  half  comes  from  the  endowment. 
It  is  a  very  striking  fact  that  men  are  tending 
the  great  turbines  beside  Niagara,  working  fast 
freight  trains  over  the  Rocky  Mountains,  drill- 
ing into  the  copper  ledges  of  Arizona,  splicing 
telephone  wires  below  the  streets  of  New  York, 

[25] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

or  standing  up  to  the  flames  of  Pittsburgh's 
blast  furnaces — and  all  to  get  Johnny  Jones  his 
college  diploma.  No  wonder  that  Woodrow 
Wilson's  motto  was  "Princeton  for  the  nation's 
service."  It  is  fairly  certain  that  the  careless- 
ness of  college  pleasure  and  the  selfishness  of 
the  collegian's  dream  of  egocentric  success  would 
yield  to  a  noble  idealism  if  these  facts  could  be 
brought  home.  The  universities  get  plenty  of 
advice  in  June,  and  we  would  add  only  this: 
Read  the  treasurer's  report  and  think  about  it. 


A   LAND   OF   SNOW 

IT  is  no  detraction  from  the  indisputable  rigors 
of  the  great  Northwest  to  say  that  when  win- 
ter is  mentioned  in  this  country  the  mind  is  as 
likely  as  not  to  turn  toward  New  England.  It 
doesn't  require  the  Weather  Bureau's  daily  Bul- 
letin from  Eastport,  Me.,  and  Northfield,  Vt., 
to  bring  this  about.  From  the  time  our  forbears 
starved  on  the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay  the 
inexorable  and  beautiful  season  of  snow  has 
seemed  as  intrinsic  a  part  of  New  England  as 
the  granite  in  her  hills.  Even  if  one  were  tempted 
to  forget  this,  the  literature  of  New  England 
would  prevent.  The  bleakness  of  winter  serves 
as  background  for  Mrs.  Wharton's  "Ethan 
Frome" — an  idyll  of  character  and  countryside 

[26] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 

worthy  of  Hawthorne  himself.  A  trio  of  poets 
paint  the  more  cheerful  aspect.  Let  Emerson 
give  us  the  storm  itself: 

Announced  by  all  the  trumpets  of  the  sky, 
Arrives  the  snow,  and,  driving  o'er  the  fields, 
Seems  nowhere  to  alight.   .    .    . 

The  housemates  sit 
Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  enclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm. 

Perhaps  a  dropping  mercury  brings  the  sort 
of  clear  night  about  which  Lowell  said: 

God  makes  sech  nights,  all  white  an'  still, 

Fur'z  you  can  look  or  listen; 
Moonshine  an'  snow  on  field  an'  hill, 

All  silence  an'  all  glisten. 

And  those  who  were  born  and  bred  among  the 
White  Mountains  or  the  Green  Mountains  or 
the  Berkshires  will  appreciate  this  from  Whit- 
tier: 

Next  morn  we  awakened  with  the  shout 

Of  merry  voices  high  and  clear; 

And  saw  the  teamsters  drawing  near 
To  break  the  drifted  highways  out. 

Down  the  long  hillside,  treading  slow, 

We  saw  the  half-buried  oxen  go, 
Shaking  the  snow  from  heads  uptost, 
Their  straining  nostrils  white  with   frost. 
[27] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

For  a  true,  compact  picture  of  old  New  Eng- 
land, nothing  beats  "Snow-Bound." 


AFTER   FIFTY   YEARS 

THE  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  Lincoln's 
death  found  a  Virginian  in  the  White 
House  and  an  ex-Confederate  soldier  from 
Louisiana  sitting  as  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme 
Court.  No  voice  of  sectionalism  is  anywhere 
raised  to  question  the  honor,  integrity,  and  serv- 
ice of  these  men.  Could  anything  have  seemed 
more  incredible  to  the  grief  and  bitterness  of 
fifty  years  ago?  Could  anything  more  vividly 
prove  the  unity  of  our  nation?  Lincoln  may 
not  have  been  "the  typical  American,"  but  he 
did  live  out  certain  qualities  of  justice  and  fair 
dealing  which  his  countrymen  have  always  re- 
sponded to  in  the  long  run.  "Gentle,  plain,  just, 
and  resolute,"  in  Walt  Whitman's  immortal 
words,  his  spirit  is  not  dead  in  the  land  he  loved. 
And  the  lesson  of  his  life  is  plain  for  every  people 
that  cares  to  learn.  The  oppressed  and  wran- 
gling races  of  Austria,  the  hating  cutthroats  of 
the  Balkans,  the  tyrants  and  victims  of  Europe 
all  the  way  from  Helsingfors  to  the  Golden 
Horn  can  have  peace  whenever  they  will  let  other 
men  lead  their  own  lives  in  honor  and  in  free- 
dom under  the  law.    Despite  anything  we  may 

[28] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 

say  in  haste,  in  partisanship  or  in  despair,  that, 
and  nothing  else,  is  the  American  plan,  and  by- 
it  our  country  will  endure. 


WHO   ARE    THE    AMERICANS? 

IN  President  Wilson's  funeral  address  at  the 
Brooklyn  Navy  Yard  over  the  bodies  of  the 
sailors  and  marines  killed  at  Vera  Cruz,  this 
question  was  answered  finally  and  beautifully. 
It  is  the  more  memorable  because  of  the  endless 
lies  that  have  been  told  respecting  Woodeow 
Wilson's  attitude  toward  newcomers.  This  is 
the  answer: 

Notice  that  these  men  were  of  our  blood.  I  mean  of  our 
American  blood,  which  is  not  drawn  from  any  one  coun- 
try, which  is  not  drawn  from  any  one  stock,  which  is  not 
drawn  from  any  one  language  of  the  modern  world,  but 
free  men  everywhere  have  sent  their  sons  and  their 
brothers  and  their  daughters  to  this  country  in  order  to 
make  that  great  compounded  nation  which  consists  of  all 
the  sturdy  elements  and  of  all  the  best  elements  of  the 
whole  globe.  I  listened  again  to  this  list  with  a  profound 
interest  at  the  mixture  of  the  names,  for  the  names  bear 
the  marks  of  several  national  stocks  from  which  these  men 
came.  But  they  are  not  Irishmen  or  Germans,  or  French- 
men or  Hebrews  any  more.  They  were  not  when  they  went 
to  Vera  Cruz;  they  were  Americans,  every  one  of  them, 
and  were  no  different  in  their  Americanism  because  of  the 
stock  from  which  they  came.  Therefore,  they  were  in  a 
peculiar  sense  of  our  blood  and  they  proved  it  by  showing 

[29] 


NATIONAL    FLOODM ARKS 

that  they  were  of  our  spirit — that  no  matter  what  their 
derivation,  no  matter  where  their  people  came  from,  they 
thought  and  wished  and  did  the  things  that  were  American ; 
and  the  flag  under  which  they  served  was  a  flag  in  which 
all  the  blood  of  mankind  is  united  to  make  a  free  nation. 

The  men  for  whom  these  stately  words  were 
said  once  bore  these  names:  Bos  well,  Defab- 
bio,  De  Lowry,  Devorick,  Fisher,  Fried, 
Frohlichstein,  Haggerty,  Lane,  Marten, 
Percy,  Poinsett,  Schumacher,  Smith, 
Stream,  Summerlin,  Watson.  All  are  Amer- 
ican names. 


UP   AND   DOWN    EAST 

WHAT'S  geography  between  friends?  A 
first-class  barber  told  us  once  that  he  had 
folks  out  West  and  he  was  going  to  visit  there 
(in  Scranton,  Pa.!) .  The  "Leading  Newspaper 
of  the  Coast,"  whose  other  name  is  the  San 
Francisco  "Chronicle,"  has  an  editorial  section 
entitled : 

AS  THE  EASTERN  EDITORS  SEE  "IT" 


They  Agree  That  the  Exposition  Is  the  "Greatest 

Ever" 

In  this  unanimity  of  praise  one  notes  the 
Brooklyn  "Eagle"  and  the  New  York  "Times" 
lifting  the  tune  along  with  the  Red  Bluff  (Cal.) 

[30] 


ON    THE    AMERICAN    PLAN 

"Sentinel,"  Victoria  (B.  C.)  "Colonist,"  and 
Salt  Lake  "Herald-Republican."  When  Peary 
stood  at  the  North  Pole  the  whole  world  was 
south  of  him  and  every  breeze  was  a  southern 
wind.  So  to  those  who  front  our  destinies  from 
beside  the  Golden  Gate,  the  whole  U.  S.  A.  is 
east  and  British  Columbia  an  addendum  thereto. 
We  "Easterners"  must  get  together  and  assert 
ourselves,  or,  when  California  really  gets  going, 
we'll  all  begin  to  tip  up  to  the  serious  detriment 
of  those  things  which  are  on  the  level,  including 
geography. 

Anyhow,  we  are  good  enough  to  go  to  that 
fair. 


APPLES    OF   GOLD 

RIVERSIDE,  Cal.,  plans  a  great  celebration 
to  take  place  in  April,  1915.  The  found- 
ing of  the  citrus-fruit  industry  of  California 
is  to  be  commemorated  by  means  of  an  ex- 
position and  a  festival.  One  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  Californians  earn  their  liv- 
ing in  this  business,  in  which  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  dollars  are  invested.  Now,  our  grand- 
parents looked  upon  the  orange  as  a  fruit  to  be 
eaten  only  by  the  well  to  do,  the  reckless,  or  the 
ill.  To-day  it  is  as  common  as  the  home-grown 
apple,  and  sometimes  cheaper.    Florida  and  Cal- 

[31] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

ifornia  are  to  be  thanked  for  this,  and  California 
must  thank  Mr.  William  Saunders,  who  in 
1868  was  the  horticulturist  of  the  little  Govern- 
ment service  at  Washington  which  has  developed 
into  our  wonderful  Department  of  Agriculture. 
Mr.  Saunders  learned  that  at  Bahia,  Brazil, 
a  seedless  orange  tree  existed.  He  secured  some 
small  trees  which  he  had  budded  for  the  purpose. 
The  first  shipment  died  in  transit,  and  Mr.  Saun- 
ders sent  for  another  to  be  packed  according  to 
his  own  minute  directions.  These  grew  in  the 
greenhouse,  under  his  charge,  in  the  old  Botan- 
ical Gardens,  now  to  be  removed  to  Rock  Creek 
Park.  In  1873  two  of  these  trees  were  sent  to 
a  friend  of  Ben  Butler  of  Massachusetts,  then 
in  Congress  and  possessed  of  a  Congressman's 
"pull."  Mrs.  C.  L.  Tibbetts  of  Riverside,  Cal., 
planted  the  trees,  and  they  are  still  living.  When 
they  began  to  bear,  the  merits  of  the  seedless 
fruit  were  recognized  at  once,  and  it  was  named 
the  Washington  navel  orange.  Nothing  could 
be  more  fitting  or  more  poetic  than  Riverside's 
celebration  of  this  victory  of  peace. 


THEIR   AMERICA— AND    OURS 

OUR  advice  is :  Don't  let  pessimists  persuade 
you  that  their  America  was  better  than 
ours,  that  the  race  is  on  the  down  grade.    For 

[32] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 

it  isn't  true.  If  you  doubt  this  statement,  con- 
sult James  Ford  Rhodes's  "History  of  the 
United  States,"  referring  to  Volume  III,  Chap- 
ter I.  Almost  all  the  foreign  travelers  who 
looked  us  over  in  the  early  nineteenth  century 
called  us  sallow  and  unhealthy.  Thackeray, 
visiting  New  York,  found  "most  of  the  ladies 
as  lean  as  greyhounds."  A  physician  diagnosed 
the  whole  nation  as  suffering  from  St.  Vitus's 
dance.  George  William  Curtis  spoke  of  his 
fellow  Americans'  "anxious  eyes  and  sallow  com- 
plexion," while  Lyell  noted  the  "careworn  ex- 
pression" characteristic  of  Yankees.  New  Eng- 
land's own  philosopher,  Emerson,  confessed  to 
"the  invalid  habits  of  the  country,"  adding:  "In 
truth,  we  are  a  nation  of  health  hunters,  betray- 
ing the  want  by  the  search."  Indiscreetly,  too, 
we  advertised  our  ailments,  and  the  hearty  salu- 
tation Good  morning!  gave  way  to  a  Howdy -do? 
that  as  often  as  not  produced  a  stream  of  con- 
fidences about  aches  and  pains.  In  Congress, 
members  opened  their  speeches  with  self-pitying 
references  to  feeble  health ;  one  gains  the  impres- 
sion in  reading  Rhodes  that  we  were  coming  to 
be  nationally  hypochondriac — till  the  Civil  War 
gave  us  something  more  worth  worrying  about. 
In  cases  where  our  grandparents'  health  really 
was  bad,  it  was  due,  in  a  measure,  to  atrociously 
bad  cooking,  to  the  drinking  of  too  many  fiery 
"drams"  between  meals,  and  to  the  fact  that 

[33] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARK  S 

city  people  took  little  or  no  exercise.  How 
much  better  off  we  are  to-day  in  habits  of  eating, 
drinking,  and  exercising  scarcely  needs  argu- 
ment. Think  what  a  boy-scout  movement  would 
have  meant  to  the  ante-bellum  generation! 
"There  are  times,"  writes  the  editor  of  the  To- 
ledo "Blade,"  "when  all  of  us  despair  of  the 
future  of  the  race — so  rampant  seems  evil,  so 
triumphant  and  arrogant  seem  vice  and  selfish- 
ness. We  know  of  nothing  that  can  so  swiftly 
restore  faith  for  humanity  as  the  sight  of  a  half 
dozen  boys  in  the  scout  khaki."  It  is  not  a  bad 
America,  citizens  all ;  it  is  an  upgrade  America ; 
it  is  the  best  and  healthiest  America  yet.  For, 
as  Emerson  put  it  for  the  benefit  of  his  own  un- 
athletic  generation,  "Health  is  the  condition  of 
wisdom" — and  no  people  at  any  time  ever  real- 
ized this  truth  more  fully  than  the  American 
people  in  1915. 


PLOWING   THE    SOUL    IN    KANSAS 

WILLIAM  ALLEN  WHITE  has  told 
us  how  Kansas  boarded  the  water  wagon. 
Enthusiastically  he  describes  his  State  reaching 
a  "stage  of  social  and  economic  adjustment  much 
nearer  the  ideal  status  of  the  dreamers  than  the 
most  radical  visionary  would  have  thought  pos- 
sible."   Then  sounds  this  sudden  wistful  note : 

[34] 


ON     THE    AMERICAN     PLAN 

And  yet  this  population,  so  abundantly  blessed,  has  not 
produced  one  great  inventor,  one  great  statesman,  one  great 
poet,  novelist,  artist,  philosopher,  or  leader  whose  fame  is 
really  lasting  and  national.  We  have  contributed  nothing 
to  the  world  that  our  sister  State  of  Nebraska,  with  her 
saloons,  cannot  duplicate,  except  happiness  and  prosperity. 
That  happiness  and  prosperity  are  worth  while,  from  the 
viewpoint  of  those  striving  to  be  happy  and  prosperous, 
no  one  can  deny.  But  are  they  worth  while  when  the 
world's  progress  is  considered?  Are  they  an  end  in  them- 
selves? When  we  are  all  happy  and  prosperous,  will  the 
world  be  finished  and  wrapped  up  ready  for  delivery  into 
whatever  heaven  or  hell  to  which  we  are  billed? 

It  is  the  pioneer's  inevitable  question — after 
pioneering  is  done.  Some  escape  it.  Their  spir- 
its demand  that  thrill  of  creation  which  comes 
from  breaking  trails,  plowing  virgin  soil,  raising 
roofs  when  the  house  one  is  building  seems  the 
only  one  in  the  world.  When  their  neighbor- 
hood gets  "too  civilized"  they  move  on.  They 
have  no  time  to  question.  Behind  the  smug  com- 
fort and  level  commonplaces  they  run  away  from' 
there  is,  however,  a  second  division  of  pioneers — 
spiritual  frontiersmen — who  go  into  new  coun- 
tries with  their  souls,  rather  than  their  bodies. 
Theirs  the  questioning  and  devils  of  doubt. 

Kansas  is  growing  up. 


[85] 


NATIONAL  FLOODMARKS 


NATURE  AT  THE  BAT 

THE  American  Geographical  Society  has 
discovered  that  the  Yukon  River  is  fifth 
among  North  American  streams.  Geographical 
fans  had  predicted  that  the  Yukon  would  not 
long  remain  in  the  second  division  of  its  league, 
and  now  they  are  hoping  that  the  June  rise  will 
place  the  Alaskan  river  in  first  place.  If  it 
should  win  the  pennant,  a  host  of  good  wishers 
will  root  for  it  in  the  world's  championship  se- 
ries. Of  course  this  game  is  not  quite  so  fast  as 
baseball,  but  it  thrills  with  divine  enthusiasm 
all  nature  fans  of  the  John  Muir  type,  who  think 
in  terms  of  geological  epochs.  To  them  a  river 
that  goes  on  a  bat  once  in  three  centuries  is  keep- 
ing its  batting  average  up  to  .300;  a  mountain 
range  that  sags  two  inches  off  its  base  is  a  dare- 
devil base  stealer;  and  a  glacier  that  travels  two 
feet  in  a  couple  of  thousand  years  is  tycobbing 
a  home  run  on  smoking  shoe  leather!  So,  you 
see,  we  cannot  laugh  at  the  geographical  and 
geological  fans.  They  are  watching  the  biggest 
game  of  all.  Old  Christy  Gravity,  their 
pitcher,  totes  a  curve  that  he  can  hurl  around 
the  sun  and  back,  and  when  he  swings  the  bat 
he  knocks  sizzling  comets  clean  across  the  sky. 


[36] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 


WEEDS    AND    LITERATURE 

MR.  JULIAN  STREET,  in  his  account 
of  his  travels  across  the  prairies,  won- 
dered why  Mark  Twain  didn't  immortalize  the 
tnmbleweed  along  with  the  jackass  rabbit,  the 
coyote,  and  the  sagebrush.  This  is  an  indictment 
of  Mr.  Clemens  which  may  stand  unless  we 
clear  his  record  now.  It  also  visualizes  Western 
history  for  forty  years.  Odd  how  things  are  re- 
lated, isn't  it?  Mark  Twain  failed  to  mention 
the  tumbleweed  because  he  didn't  see  it.  In  the 
days  of  "Roughing  It,"  the  tumbleweed  was  the 
humble  little  plant  Psoralea  lanceolate  growing 
beside  badger  holes  and  on  the  mounds  of  pocket 
gophers,  and  not  yet  wept,  honored,  or  sung.  It 
had  had  no  chance.  Along  came  the  American 
farmer — after  the  days  of  Mark  Twain's  jour- 
ney— and  ripped  up  the  prairies  with  his  plow. 
The  tumbleweed  seen  its  duty  and  done  it  at 
once — it  shed  its  seeds  on  the  new  breaking  and 
flourished  in  a  way  to  put  the  green  bay  tree  to 
shame.  Mr.  Hayden  Carruth,  then  editor  of 
the  Estelline  (S.  Dak.)  "Bell"  and  now  a  New 
York  magazine  editor,  did  the  immortalizing  for 
the  tumbleweed  which  Mark  Twain  had  omitted. 
He  described  the  weird  manner  in  which  the 
tumbleweed  races  back  and  forth  over  the  prai- 
ries, invading  North  Dakota  before  the  south- 

[37] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEK8 

east  wind,  coming  back  into  the  settlements  when 
the  wind  changed.  The  German  immigrants  had 
a  really  good  name  for  it — an  expression  which 
meant  "vegetable  wolf,"  in  recognition  of  the 
wolflike  lope  of  the  brown  weed  spinning  before 
the  Western  zephyrs.  Then  came  the  Russian 
immigrants,  bringing  with  them  the  seed  of  the 
Russian  thistle — Salsola  tragus,  or  saltwort — 
which  looks  exactly  like  the  American  tumble- 
weed  when  in  motion,  but  is  to  it  as  bubonic 
plague  to  chicken  pox.  This  is,  no  doubt,  the 
tumbleweed  seen  by  Mr.  Street.  Probably  Mr. 
Carruth's  tumbleweed  literature  was  infected 
by  both  plants.  In  order  that  the  one  might 
succeed  the  other,  the  great  American  desert  had 
to  be  changed  to  farms,  and  made  the  new  and 
happy  homes  of  countless  European  and  metro- 
politan refugees.  If  you  ask  them,  the  tumble- 
weed  is  nowhere  near  as  harmless  as  Mr.  Street 
thinks  it.  Of  course  it  does  not  invade  the  Pull- 
man car,  but — well,  one  must  not  expect  too 
much  of  the  tenderfoot. 


WE    TAKE    STOCK 

FIFTY  years  from  now,  when  some  writer 
brings  Woodrow  Wilson's  "History  of 
the  American  People"  up  to  date,  we  think  he 
will  say  that  the  ten  years  ending  about  January 

[38] 


ON     THE     AMERICAN     PLAN 

1,  1914,  was  the  period  of  the  greatest  ethical 
advance  made  by  this  nation  in  any  decade.  On 
the  material  side  he  will  doubtless  conclude  that 
the  most  important  phenomenon  of  this  ten  years 
was  the  development  of  the  gasoline  engine  and, 
especially  in  the  latter  part  of  the  decade,  its 
adaptation  to  commercial  uses,  to  doing,  in  cities 
and  on  farms,  the  work  formerly  done  by  human 
and  other  animal  labor.  And  we  think  the  same 
historian  will  say  that  the  most  important  eco- 
nomic feature  of  the  next  decade,  from  1914  until, 
say,  1924,  was  the  completing  of  great  highways 
and  the  improvement  of  roads  everywhere.  If 
he  is  a  very  discerning  historian,  he  will  point 
out  that  the  improvement  of  roads  was  an  in- 
cident and  result  of  the  development  of  the  gaso- 
line engine.  Probably  he  will  record  that  the 
first  real  success  achieved  in  a  long  attempt  to 
reduce  the  cost  of  living  came  at  the  completion 
of  the  good-roads  era,  when  farmers  within  a 
radius  of  fifty  or  sixty  miles  from  the  city  were 
able  to  pack  their  produce  on  five  or  ten  ton 
motor  trucks  and  take  it  themselves  in  a  four 
or  five  hour  journey  to  the  consumer  in  the  city. 
Because  it  was  a  gradual  perfecting,  because 
there  was  no  single  invention  with  a  picturesque 
quality,  like  Bell's  discovery  of  the  telephone, 
the  significance  and  importance  of  the  gasoline 
engine  and  its  adaptation  to  the  automobile,  to 
the  carrying  of  burdens,  and  to  doing  the  heavy 

[39] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

work  on  farms,  have  been  lost.  Few  of  the  his- 
toric aids  to  the  advance  of  civilization  have  been 
of  as  great  help  as  the  completion  of  a  portable 
fountain  of  energy  which,  weighing  only  one-half 
as  much  as  a  horse,  will  do  the  work  of  sixty 
horses  and  keep  it  up  without  rest  for  practically 
an  unlimited  time. 


[40] 


Ill 

SOME  HUMANi  BEINGS 


MAKING  DREAMS  COME  TRUE 

IT  is  not  given  to  everyone  to  purchase  the 
lost  delights  of  golden-houred  boyhood.  But 
Edwaed  Tilden,  Chicago's  millionaire 
packer,  has  found  it  possible  to  retrace  the  Road 
to  Yesterday  and  to  reclaim  from  eternity  at 
least  one  halcyon  day  which,  as  a  boy,  he  was  de- 
nied. A  half  century  ago  a  tanned,  barefooted 
country  lad  with  a  big  lump  in  his  throat  stood 
by  the  roadside  near  Delavan,  Wis.,  and  watched 
a  circus  caravan  disappear  over  the  hills.  That 
was  as  near  as  he  had  ever  come  to  seeing  a  cir- 
cus. The  red  gods  had  called;  he  could  not  fol- 
low. And  as  his  hopes  faded  away,  and  his  vi- 
sions of  a  sawdust  ring  and  pink  lemonade  were 
buried  in  his  heart  forever,  he  vowed  that  some 
time  he'd  come  back  and  "take  every  kid  in  town 
to  the  circus."  How  faithfully  he  kept  his  prom- 
ise, 2,800  youngsters  of  his  boyhood  home  can  tell 
you.  On  a  recent  June  day  the  boys  and  girls 
from  miles  around  were  treated  to  a  circus,  an 
aeroplane  flight,  and  a  picnic  on  Mr.  Tilden 's 

[41] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

Wisconsin  estate.  Ah,  and  the  bitterness  of 
years  was  swept  away  by  one  look  into  their 
happy  faces !  They  at  least  had  not  been  cheated, 
and  their  wildest  dreams  had  come  true.  That 
day  will  be  written  in  their  calendars  in  gold  let- 
ters, while  a  correction  will  be  made  on  that  kept 
by  a  country  boy  fifty  long  years  ago. 


SUCCESS 

WHAT  is  success?  Sometimes  it  begins  in 
apparent  failure.  A  young  physician 
went  from  New  York  to  a  small  Western  city 
to  begin  the  practice  of  his  profession.  For  a 
number  of  years  he  had  been  attached  to  a  New 
York  hospital,  where  he  had  unusual  opportuni- 
ties to  study  stomach  diseases.  When  he  reached 
the  small  city,  he  found  the  community  consid- 
erably excited  because  one  of  its  important  citi- 
zens seemed  about  to  die  of  cancer  of  the  stomach. 
The  young  doctor  was  called  in.  He  analyzed 
the  contents  of  the  man's  stomach,  discovered 
that  he  did  not  have  cancer,  located  the  true  cause 
of  his  suffering,  applied  appropriate  treatment, 
and  in  a  short  time  put  the  man  on  his  feet.  Suc- 
cess? Well,  promptly  every  genuine  cancer  vic- 
tim within  a  radius  of  forty  miles  was  brought 
to  the  doctor  for  treatment.  And  because  a  care- 
ful diagnosis  showed  a  cancer  in  every  case,  and 

[42] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


because  he  could  not  cure  a  single  one  of  these 
unfortunates,  faith  in  his  ability  declined  as  rap- 
idly as  it  had  risen.  In  vain  he  explained  that 
his  first  success  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  diagnosis 
disclosed  a  patient  who  was  not  suffering  from 
a  fatal  disease.  However,  he  had  to  give  up 
practice  and  move  to  another  town. 

Will  he  succeed?  Very  likely.  It  is  not  easy 
to  down  a  man  of  real  ability  who  is  courageous 
and  declines  to  fake. 


"JUST    CALL    ME    MAY" 

IN  a  drunken  brawl  in  a  dingy  flat  a  girl  is 
mortally  stabbed,  and  as  the  police,  bending 
over  her,  ask  her  name,  she  says:  "Just  call 
me  May  ;  that  will  do.  I  do  not  want  to  tell  you 
who  I  am."  And  the  press  of  a  great  country 
reprints  the  little  sentence  from  coast  to  coast. 
The  wise  words  of  a  great  philosopher  would 
not  be  given  more  publicity.  Why?  Because, 
after  all,  the  little  things  are  the  big  ones.  The 
simple  are  the  universal.  And  because  the  one 
unappeasable  hunger  of  the  human  mind  is  for 
drama.  It  is  thus  that  the  yellow  press  can 
hold  the  multitude.  Virtue  we  need,  wit  we  need, 
philosophy  we  need,  but  drama  we  must  have. 
The  scare  head  calls  her  a  beauty.  She  was  prob- 
ably no  more  beautiful  than  she  was  good,  but 

[«] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

she  did  the  one  thing  which  could  thrust  her,  if 
only  for  a  moment,  from  the  sordid  unimpor- 
tance of  her  little  life  on  to  the  screen  of  the 
world's  events:  she  died  dramatically. 


COLONEL    NELSON    OF    THE    "STAR" 

THIS,  our  obituary  of  William  Rockhill 
Nelson,  shall  be  no  sugary  "tribute."  The 
founder  and  editor  of  the  Kansas  City  "Star" 
would  not  want  that.  He  took  his  place  in  jour- 
nalism's Hall  of  Fame — and  it  was  a  high  place, 
up  beside  Horace  Greeley  and  Samuel 
Bowles — by  kicking  in  the  door  with  hobnailed 
boots.  "I've  tried  to  be  gentle  and  diplomatic," 
he  once  explained,  "but  I've  never  done  well  in 
my  stocking  feet."  He  was  set  on  doing  things, 
and  if  you  got  in  his  way  he  stepped  on  your 
neck.  To  describe  his  personality  you  had  a 
choice  between  "dominant"  and  "domineering." 
His  friends  called  him  "Colonel";  his  enemies, 
"Baron."  He  had  no  respect  for  labels  (some- 
times you  found  his  paper  supporting  a  Republi- 
can candidate  for  President  and  a  Democratic 
candidate  for  governor) ;  and  he  wasn't  afraid  of 
any  man  or  set  of  men  under  heaven.  The  sub- 
scriber who  paid  a  dime  a  week  for  thirteen  pa- 
pers got  the  same  impartial  hearing  in  his  court 
as  a  big  department  store  or  a  theater.    He  never 

[44] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


took  any  back  talk  from  advertisers;  his  paper 
went  into  every  home  in  Kansas  City,  and  they 
needed  him  in  their  business.  Though  the  "Star" 
was  carrying  hundreds  of  dollars'  worth  of  ad- 
vertising for  liquors  and  beer,  he  enthusiastically 
approved  Governor  Folk's  efforts  to  enforce  the 
Sunday-closing  law.  The  brewers  and  distillers, 
and  their  allies,  warned  him  to  shut  up  or  they 
would  withdraw  their  advertising.  He  threw 
them  all  out  of  his  columns  and  never  let  them 
in  again.  To-day  no  price  would  seem  too  ex- 
orbitant to  these  gentry  if  only  they  could  get 
back.  The  manager  of  a  theater  once  tried  like 
tactics.  Colonel  Nelson  told  him:  "Out 
you  go  and  out  you  stay!"  Great  players — 
Maude  Adams  among  them — appeared  at  that 
theater,  but  the  "Star"  ignored  them,  and  Kansas 
City  knew  not  of  their  coming  and  going.  The 
editor  who  does  things  in  this  fashion  makes 
enemies.  But  when  he  was  talked  of  as  the  Taft 
Administration's  Ambassador  to  France,  Colo- 
nel Nelson  ended  the  discussion  by  saying  that 
the  editor  of  the  "Star"  "regarded  himself  as 
holding  a  place  of  greater  responsibility  and  use- 
fulness than  any  within  the  gift  of  the  President 
or  the  electorate." 


[45] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


THE   DEATH   OF   MADERO 

AND  so  it  has  come  about  that  what  is  known 
as  "being  practical"  is  considered  all-im- 
portant; everybody  will  be  "practical"  and  no- 
body so  silly  as  to  give  his  life  for  his  country, 
for,  after  all,  what  is  one's  country?  A  myth; 
an  immaterial,  intangible  thing,  which  produces 
nothing. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  faith,  which  can  raise 
one  to  a  realm  to  which  mere  reason  cannot  pene- 
trate. This  faith  has  always  inspired  great  sac- 
rifices, sublime  abnegations — this  faith  which, 
piercing  the  cold  facts,  sees  the  higher  destiny 
of  a  nation,  the  mysterious  hand  of  Providence 
reaching  out  to  guide  a  people. 

Peace  under  the  law.  Peace,  turbulent,  if  you 
will,  but  full  of  vitality — the  peace  of  a  free 
people,  not  the  sepulchral  peace  of  the  oppressed, 
whose  inanimate  tranquillity  nothing  can  dis- 
turb. 

These  were  the  words  of  the  man  who  has 
gone  down  to  defeat  and  death  in  Mexico  after  a 
year's  struggle  against  hopeless  odds.  There 
was  almost  no  chance  for  him  from  the  first.  He 
could  please  no  one — neither  the  powerful,  whose 
feudal  grip  his  modern  ideas  would  have  broken 
could  they  have  been  carried  into  effect,  nor  the 
helpless  brown  mass,  whose  voice  he  became,  and 

[46] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


who  fancied,  once  Don  Panchito  were  Presi- 
dent, they  could  pick  silver  pesos  from  the  trees. 
He  was  no  fighter,  "the  little  sawed-off,"  as  the 
pelados  called  him,  no  iron  man,  born  to  rule. 
Had  he  been  that,  indeed,  the  revolution  he  led 
might  have  been  commonplace  enough.  He  was 
just  an  ordinary  man  in  a  straw  hat — a  worried 
little  man  trying  to  help.  A  dreamer,  no  doubt, 
as  people  are  fond  of  repeating,  but  it  took  more 
than  invertebrate  mooning  to  write  the  "Presi- 
dential Succession"  and  to  rise  against  old  Don 
Porfirio  when  the  Diaz  tradition  still  stood 
solid  as  a  rock.  The  success  of  Madero,  the  com- 
ing to  the  capital  of  that  comfortable  provincial 
family,  so  free  .  from  the  polished  inhumanity 
often  found  in  Mexicans  of  the  ruling  class, 
seemed  a  definite  step  forward  in  the  humanizing 
of  that  strange  land  of  sunshine  and  dust  and 
blood.  And  whatever  Madero's  mistakes  or  in- 
efficiencies, the  crushing  out  of  this  experiment  in 
democracy  carries  with  it  that  sense  of  almost 
personal  tragedy  which  is  felt  when,  in  any  part 
of  the  world,  the  Napoleonic  cynicism,  that  God 
is  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  battalions,  seems 
for  the  moment  true.  In  the  shelters  to  which 
Francisco  Madero's  family  and  followers  may 
be  driven  there  is  at  least  this  thing  for  them 
to  remember:  Visions  like  his  may  not  always 
come  true,  but  they  are  not  forgotten.  And  it 
is  "crazy  dreamers,"  like  "El  Chapparito,"  to 

[47] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

whom,  generations  after  the  "practical"  men  are 
dust,  grateful  peoples  build  monuments  and  of 
whom  they  sometimes  make  their  saints. 


TO    OUR    STENOGRAPHER 

WHO  else  knows  us  half  so  well?  She  has 
heard  all  that  we  have  said  and  then 
made  notes  of  it.  She  has  read  our  incoming 
letters.  She  knows  who  pleads  with  us  for  help 
and  what  we  do  about  it.  Do  we  write  frankly 
or  evasively,  she  follows  the  straight-hewed  line 
or  the  curve  of  our  deviousness.  Are  we  cour- 
teous only  to  the  powerful,  or  is  our  treatment 
even  to  all  who  come  seeking?  The  woman  at 
our  elbow,  hammering  out  our  paragraphs,  is  a 
clear-eyed  witness.  Over  the  telephone  voices 
drift  in  from  the  world  outside,  and  the  tone  of 
each  speaker  is  caught  and  judged  before  our 
presence  is  acknowledged.  She  knows  whether 
our  friends  are  worthy.  Is  the  home  happy? 
She  knows  it.  She  notes  all  our  tricks  of  per- 
son. Our  good  temper,  our  clean  speech,  fly 
further  than  we  guess.  She  is  familiar  with  the 
stale  phrases  we  scatter  over  the  thousand  rou- 
tine letters,  and  is  gladdened  when  we  light  up 
the  languid  page  with  an  unspoiled  turn.  She  is 
aware  when  we  have  tumbled  out  from  a  laden 
desk  to  a  World's  Series  ball  game.     She  too 

[48] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


would  enjoy  Mr.  Baker's  versatility,  but  she 
wades  through  our  debris  till  twilight.  She  could 
keep  our  tardy  correspondence  up  to  the  minute, 
but  she  has  to  time  her  efficiency  to  our  limita- 
tions. Never  outpacing  us,  she  is  as  loyal  in  the 
background  as  our  shadow. 


A    KING    OF    MEN 

GEORGE  WESTINGHOUSE,  one  of  the 
leaders  of  our  age,  is  dead.  Many  of 
basic  services  of  our  time  depend  upon  the 
improvements  in  electrical  and  mechanical  engi- 
neering practice  which  his  stubborn  genius 
wrested  from  the  hard  world  of  nature.  Before 
he  was  twenty-two  years  old  he  had  served  four 
years  in  the  Civil  War  and  had  invented  the  air 
brake  which  made  possible  the  modern  use  and 
control  of  high-speed  railroad  trains.  Over  three 
hundred  patents  stand  to  his  credit,  and  his  name 
is  inseparably  connected  with  electric  light  and 
power,  steam  turbines,  air  springs,  and  many 
other  modern  wonders.  While  lights  flash  and 
trains  run,  George  Westinghouse  will  be  re- 
membered. His  mechanical  and  organizing  abil- 
ities brought  him  to  the  headship  of  corporations 
using  capital  by  the  hundred  millions  and  num- 
bering employees  by  tens  of  thousands,  and  yet 
every  one  of  them  knew  that  "the  old  man" 

[49] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

could  take  the  tools  and  do  a  better  job.  He 
was  the  first  great  employer  in  this  country  to 
put  in  the  Saturday  half  holiday,  and  he  never 
had  a  dispute  or  a  strike  in  forty  years.  Hard 
work,  justice,  and  honor  were  the  standards  of 
his  life,  a  life  singularly  free  from  the  vanity, 
greed,  and  deceit  that  mar  so  many  able  men. 
When  he  went  to  his  grave  the  coffin  was  car- 
ried by  eight  gray  old  veterans  who  had  been 
with  him  since  the  shops  were  started  in  Turtle 
Creek  Valley,  near  Pittsburgh,  and  the  many 
thousands  employed  there  quit  work  to  honor 
him.  In  all  our  modern  world  there  is  not  a 
monarch  fit  to  stand  with  Geoege  Westing- 
house. 


THE    WAYS    OF   ATROPOS 

T  "K  TEi  once  had  an  aunt,  a  very  sweet  but  very 
V  V  timid  aunt.  Indeed,  she  was  so  timid 
that  she  spent  all  her  gentle  life  in  the  little  town 
of  her  birth,  nor  ventured  into  the  cold  world 
for  fear  of  the  awful  perils  which  beset  the  wan- 
derer by  land  and  sea.  All  her  brothers  and  her 
sisters,  her  nephews  and  her  nieces,  were  adven- 
turous and  quite  incorrigible,  but  it  was  Aunt 
Faith's  dearest  boast  that  by  her  prudence  they 
were  dissuaded  from  their  maddest  enterprises. 
One  summer  they  all  set  out  for  parts  remote 

[50] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


to  pass  their  vacations  in  devious  dangerous 
ways.  One  went  to  Europe  over  the  briny  deep, 
one  hunted  grizzlies  in  the  Rockies,  one  explored 
Canada  in  a  canoe,  one  sought  gold  in  the  Klon- 
dike, but  not  even  the  mildest  of  these  expedi- 
tions tempted  Aunt  Faith.  Her  timid  heart 
quailed  before  such  perilous  adventures.  So  she 
stayed  quietly  in  her  peaceful  home  and  prayed 
for  the  safety  of  the  others.  One  breezy  Sunday 
morning,  as  she  was  walking  serenely  to  church 
with  her  Sunday-school  Quarterly  under  her  arm, 
a  limb  blew  off  an  elm  tree  and  stilled  her  gentle 
admonitions  forever.  And  her  brothers  and  her 
sisters,  her  nephews  and  her  nieces,  came  home 
to  honor  her  memory  from  the  farthermost  parts 
of  the  earth. 


THE    MAN    WHO    WROTE    "COLONEL    CAR- 
TER   OF    CARTERSVILLE" 

OLD  HOP  SMITH  is  a  landmark  gone. 
"Old"  was  solely  a  mark  of  endearment. 
Had  he  lived  a  hundred  years  he  wouldn't  have 
been  old.  He  was  the  kind  of  man  of  whom 
younger  men  say  "He's  a  fine  old  boy."  His 
abounding  vitality  is  the  most  striking  recollec- 
tion that  will  linger  with  those  who  knew  him. 
A  fine,  robustious  vitality  leaped  in  his  springy 
walk;  it  rode  on  his  stiff  and  burly  shoulders; 

[51] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

it  bristled  out  of  ends  of  his  old-fashioned,  wiry, 
upturned  mustaches.  When  he  strode  to  the 
front  of  a  platform  you  felt  as  if  he  were  roar- 
ing out:  "Come  up  here,  all  you  people  of 
smaller  vitality,  and  have  a  good  time  with  me." 
He  liked  all  kinds  of  old-fashioned  American 
things,  and  wrote  about  them  and  praised  them. 
He  had  a  thunderous  hate  for  the  unwholesome 
modernisms  and  decadences  of  a  good  many  up- 
to-date  authors.  Plain,  old-fashioned  ideals 
abode  in  him — ideals  like  honor  and  patriotism 
and  chivalry  and  hearty  kindliness.  All  told, 
few  living  men  have  given  out  so  much  pleasure 
and  stimulation  to  others.  We  shall  miss  him  for 
the  way  he  helped  us  despise  some  of  the  pinched 
little  pessimists  who  will  try  to  fill  his  shoes. 


BIG   TIM 

A  MACHINE  politician,  dead  or  alive, 
serves  to  sharpen  the  point  of  the  moral- 
ist. So  we  hear  now  that  "Big  Tim"  Sullivan's 
career  "ended  miserably,"  that  "the  audacious 
and  domineering  grafter  of  the  Sullivan  type  has 
passed  into  history."  We  wonder!  Here  was 
a  man  who,  in  spite  of  civic  faults,  never  smoked, 
never  drank,  never  lost  his  temper;  who  left 
school  at  eight  or  nine  and  fought  his  way  to 
wealth  and  power;  who  loved  life  and  played  the 

[52] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


game;  who  kept  the  faith  with  those  who  fol- 
lowed him,  and  never  lost  interest  in  or  sympathy 
with  the  submerged  tenth.  Political  methods 
change;  the  "strategy"  of  one  generation  is  crime 
in  the  next.  We  are  working  out  a  pure  ballot, 
fair  nominations,  honest  elections;  we  are  on  the 
way  toward  divorcing  government  from  privilege 
and  office  from  privileged  incompetence,  but  the 
people  of  our  cities  will  always  value  the  leader- 
ship of  men  who  care  about  them,  who  look 
after  them  in  their  distress,  and  sympathize  with 
them  in  their  small  struggles  and  triumphs. 
When  sociologists  talk  about  "consciousness  of 
kind"  they  have  in  mind  something  much  more 
fundamental  than  any  movement  toward  effi- 
ciency methods.  What  would  New  York  or  any 
other  city  in  our  country  be  like  to-day  if  the 
men  of  light  and  leading,  of  virtue  and  power, 
of  wealth  and  correct  methods,  had  the  broad  hu- 
manity of  this  saloon-keeping  son  of  an  Irish  im- 
migrant, this  "creature  of  the  underworld"? 
Our  political  ethics  and  practices  will  improve, 
but  men  of  good  will  are  sure  to  count  until  the 
last  ballot  has  been  cast. 


[53] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

A   MINER   OF    GOOD    METAL 

THERE  has  died  at  Helena,  Mont.,  a  remark- 
able character ;  remarkable  in  that,  while  he 
was  worth  several  millions  of  dollars  and  had  as 
romantic  a  career  as  has  ever  been  portrayed  in 
fiction,  he  never  sought  publicity  and  certainly 
never  dreamed  that  his  name  or  deeds  would  be 
blazoned  even  on  this  quiet  page.  Yet  there  are 
several  angles  of  Thomas  Cruse's  career  that  are 
worth  pondering.  Out  of  obscurity  and  poverty 
he  became  one  of  the  wealthiest  and  most  influ- 
ential citizens  of  a  State  famed  for  its  men  of 
wealth  and  spectacular  achievement.  He  dis- 
covered the  Drum-Lummon  mine.  Unlike  many 
mining  men,  his  good  fortune  did  not  turn  his 
head.  Though  illiterate,  he  became  a  successful 
business  man  and  banker,  and  left  behind  him  the 
example  of  a  well-spent,  upright  life,  starred 
with  many  good  deeds.  In  a  time  of  financial 
depression,  when  money  was  hard  to  get  even 
at  high  rates  of  interest,  he  loaned  his  State  the 
funds  to  build  its  capitol.  His  mining  industry 
supported  for  years  a  community  of  contented 
souls.  Yet  had  there  been  a  literacy  test  at  the 
time  of  his  advent  in  this  country,  he  would  have 
been  compelled  to  return  to  the  Green  Isle 
whence  he  came.  For  twenty  years,  while  in  the 
lonely  hills  he  dug  for  the  treasure  which  he  had 
faith  was  there,  he  braved  the  taunts  of  young 

[54] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


and  old  on  his  visits  to  Helena  to  beg  credit  for 
flour  and  bacon  to  keep  him  alive.  Boys  jeered 
him  in  the  streets,  so  austere  was  his  manner  and 
so  ragged  his  clothes.  When  he  was  paid  his  first 
cash  installment  of  $1,600,000  on  his  Drum- 
Lummon  mine  by  an  English  syndicate,  he 
showed  his  philosophy  by  turning  to  a  friend  as 
he  pocketed  a  roll  of  bills  and  telling  him  that  he 
had  suffered  for  years  the  derision  of  many  nick- 
names, but  that  he  had  an  opinion  he  would  be 
known  henceforth  as  "Mr.  Cruse."  Nobody 
had  ever  thought  enough  of  him  to  call  him  that 
before.  He  showed  his  human  nature  when,  dur- 
ing the  panic  of  1893,  he  sent  word  to  one  or  two 
merchants  who  had  given  him  precious  credit 
when  he  needed  it  that  his  bank  vaults  were  open 
to  them,  but  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  appeals  of 
others  who  had  turned  deaf  ears  to  his  appeals  in 
his  days  of  trial.  Here  was  great  wealth,  hon- 
estly achieved,  against  which  no  man  railed,  and  it 
was  not  the  root  of  evil  or  of  riotous  living,  but 
branches  laden  with  good — modestly  and  fit- 
tingly showered. 


FRIENDSHIP 

PERSONALITY— the  gift  of  influence  and 
the    capacity    for    friendship — these    are 
priceless  qualities  anywhere.     They  have  most 

[55] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

value,  however,  where  educators  are  concerned. 
Sometimes  we  almost  despair  of  our  universities, 
with  their  overemphasis  upon  equipment,  as  if  a 
plant  were  ever  so  potent  as  a  man;  sometimes 
we  do  despair  of  the  college  presidents  and  their 
insistence  upon  the  doctorate  of  philosophy  and 
the  fact  of  contributing  articles  and  books  to 
the  press  as  sine  qua  non  of  academic  promotion. 
To  illustrate  by  a  single  institution,  take  Har- 
vard. The  impress  received  by  boys  educated 
at  Harvard  during  the  second  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  came  in  most  cases  from  men  who 
held  no  degree  other  than  the  plain  "B.  A." 
The  gift  of  friendship  was  bestowed  most  largely 
perhaps  upon  that  cousin  of  President  Eliot 
whose  correspondence  is  now  announced  for  pub- 
lication— Charles  Eliot  Norton.  One  of  the 
most  eloquent  of  American  critics  and  poets, 
George  Edward  Woodberry.,  does  homage  to 
the  memory  of  Professor  Norton  in  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  poem  which  he  read  at  the  Harvard  Com- 
mencement this  year — referring  to  himself 
therein  as  Norton's  "firstling  charge,  boy  leader 
of  the  host  of  those  who  followed  in  the  after- 
time."  Here  is  Mr.  Woodberry's  picture  of  the 
master  of  Shady  Hill,  correspondent  of  Emer- 
son and  Carlyle,  and  friend  to  many  lonely 
sophomores : 

A  grave  demeanor  masked  his  solitude, 
Like  the  dark  pines  of  his  seignorial  wood; 
[56] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


But  there  within  was  hid  how  warm  a  hearth 
Hospitable,  and  bright  with  children's  mirth. 
How  many  thence  recall  his  social  grace, 
The  general  welcome  beaming  from  his  face, 
The  shy  embarrassment  of  his  good  will 
Chafing  against  the  forms  that  held  it  still; 
Or,  in  more  private  hours,  the  high  discourse, 
With  soft  persuasion  veiling  moral  force; 
The  reticent  mouth,  the  sweet  reserved  style; 
Something  unsaid  still  lingered  in  his  smile; 
For  more  he  felt  than  ever  he  expressed. 

There  is  talk  of  applying  efficiency  systems  to 
the  colleges,  but  what  efficiency  system  can  check 
up  the  value  to  one  college  of  a  man  like  Norton, 
a  professor  of  the  humanities  who  taught  hu- 
manity? 


JOHN    <y    THE    MOUNTAINS 

THE  passing  of  John  Mtjir,  savior  of  our 
national  parks,  moves  Charles  L.  Edson, 
colyumist  of  the  New  York  "Evening  Mail,"  to 
sing: 

John  o'  the  mountains,  wonderful  John, 
Is  past  the  summit  and  traveling  on; 
The  turn  of  the  trail  on  the  mountainside, 
A  smile  and  "Hail!"  where  the  glaciers  slide, 
A  streak  of  red  where  the  condors  ride, 
And  John  is  over  the  Great  Divide. 
[57] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

John  o'  the  mountains  camps  to-day 

On  a  level  spot  by  the  milky  way; 

And  God  is  telling  him  how  He  rolled 

The  smoking  earth  from  the  iron  mold, 

And  hammered  the  mountains  till  they  were  cold, 

And  planted  the  Redwood  trees  of  old. 

And  John  o'  the  mountains  says:    "I  knew, 
And  I  wanted  to  grapple  the  hand  o'  you; 
And  now  we're  sure  to  be  friends  and  chums 
And  camp  together  till  chaos  comes." 

Of  course  John  Mute  and  God  are  friends. 
Muir  fraternized  with  the  birds  of  the  field  and 
forest  and  chummed  with  the  squirrel  and  the 
bear.  He  rhapsodized  over  the  beauty  and 
sweetness  of  flowers  and  communed  with  God 
through  the  Redwoods  and  pines.  His  life  was 
a  glorification  of  God's  original  handiwork. 


JACOB    RIIS 

THE  life  story  of  Jacob  Bjis  is  as  a  trumpet 
call  of  idealism.  He  believed  in  better  and 
happier  people  and  gave  his  strength  to  that 
faith.  As  a  young  newspaper  reporter  he  came 
in  contact  with  the  unspeakable  iniquities  of  the 
old  Five  Points  section  in  New  York  City — 
evils  maintained  and  fortified  by  the  tacit  alli- 
ance  of   respectable   landowners,   corrupt    po- 

[58] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


lice,  and  mercenary  politicians.  What  could  one 
man  do  against  so  many?  Riis  never  noticed  the 
odds,  but  went  in  and  won  a  victory  as  astound- 
ing as  Joshua's  when  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell. 
Mulberry  Bend  Park  is  his  monument,  and  the 
bettered  lives  of  those  for  whom  he  let  in  air  and 
sun  are  his  memorial.  It  is  a  true  description  of 
Jacob  Riis  to  say  that  he  warmed  the  heart  of  a 
great  city. 


ETERNAL  YOUTH 

THE  larger  achievements  in  life  depend  on 
breadth  of  vision  and  the  ability  to  stay 
young.  It  takes  something  more  than  a  grasp  of 
visual  details  to  make  a  successful  man.  He 
must  see  behind  them,  understanding  their  rela- 
tions to  the  past  and  their  significance  for  the 
future.  In  addition  to  this  he  must  cherish  the 
enthusiasm,  the  idealism  of  youth.  There  is  one 
man  in  this  country  to-day  who  perfectly  exem- 
plifies these  qualities  of  breadth  and  idealism. 
That  man  is  Dr.  Eliot.  A  passage  in  Emer- 
son's "Journal"  sums  up  the  reasons  for  Dr. 
Eliot's  achievement: 

The  Age,  what  is  it?  It  is  what  the  being  is  who  uses 
it — a  dead  routine  to  me,  and  the  vista  of  Eternity  to  thee. 
One  man's  view  of  the  Age  is  confined  to  his  shop  and  the 
market,  and  another's  sees  the  roots  of  To-day  in  all  the 

[59] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMABKS 

Past  and  beneath  the  Past  in  the  Necessary  and  Eternal. 
Let  us  not  dwell  so  fondly  on  the  characteristics  of  a  single 
Epoch  as  to  bereave  ourselves  of  the  permanent  privileges 
of  man. 

We  ought  never  to  lose  our  youth.  In  all  natural  and 
necessary  labors,  as  in  the  work  of  a  farm,  in  digging,  in 
splitting,  rowing,  drawing  water,  a  man  always  appears 
young — is  still  a  boy.  So  in  doing  anything  which  is  still 
above  him — which  asks  all  his  strength  and  more;  some- 
what commensurate  with  his  ability,  so  that  he  works  up  to 
it,  not  down  upon  it — he  is  still  a  youth. 

The  great  man  is  the  combination  of  thinker 
and  doer,  one  who  lives  in  the  present,  not  un- 
mindful of  the  past,  but  working  for  the  future. 
This  is  to  live  richly  and  to  grow  younger  with 
the  years. 


GUNCKEL'S   WAY 

A  FEW  days  ago  hundreds  of  newsboys  and 
other  hundreds  of  Toledo's  business  men 
escorted  an  invalid  from  his  home  in  Toledo  to 
the  railway  depot  and  silently  waved  an  adieu 
as  he  was  taken  to  Baltimore  for  an  operation 
in  an  attempt  to  save  his  life.  He  was  John  E. 
Gunckel,  local  passenger  agent  at  Toledo  for 
the  Lake  Shore  Railroad,  universally  known  as 
the  "Father  of  the  Newsboys."  His  career  as 
the  patron  of  newsboys  began  by  taking  out  to 
dinner  one  or  two  street  urchins  he  took  a  fancy 

[60] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


to.  That  custom  grew  into  a  Sunday  afternoon 
entertainment  for  all  the  newsboys  of  Toledo, 
and  annually  a  big  Christmas  dinner,  the  funds 
for  which  Gunckel  used  to  raise  among  the  busi- 
ness men  of  Toledo.  These  gatherings  led  to  a 
newsboys'  association,  the  by-laws  of  which  pro- 
hibited the  smoking  of  cigarettes,  and  swearing. 
The  boys  themselves  named  their  own  censors, 
and  these  looked  after  the  morals  of  the  crew. 
If  they  caught  a  kid  smoking  a  cigarette  or 
swearing  or  short-changing  a  customer  on  the 
street,  they  would  report  to  the  association,  which 
assessed  the  punishment  for  these  offenses.  The 
organization  finally  took  in  the  newspaper  car- 
riers of  Toledo,  and  with  the  assistance  of  Mr. 
A.  E.  Lang,  one-time  president  of  Toledo's 
street-car  system,  they  built  Toledo's  famous 
Newsboys'  Home,  with  swimming  pools,  gym- 
nasium, reading  rooms,  etc.  Gunckel  taught 
the  boys  the  strictest  honor,  and  these  wards  of 
his  have  turned  in  hundreds  of  pocketbooks  and 
other  valuables  found  on  the  streets  of  Toledo 
during  the  course  of  a  year.  Out  of  the  Toledo 
movement  grew  the  National  Association  of 
Newsboys,  which  has  an  enormous  membership. 
When  one  modest  citizen,  without  wealth  and 
from  a  kindly  impulse,  can  do  so  much  of  good 
in  the  world,  how  large  the  opportunities  for 
usefulness  ought  to  seem  to  all  the  rest  of  us. 


[61] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


THE    GREAT   HEART   OF    IRELAND 

FATHER  MAURICE  DORNEY  was  the 
beloved  priest  who  kept  the  saloons  out  of 
his  parish  of  St.  Gabriel's  in  the  Chicago  stock- 
yards district,  and  gave  unstinted  love  and  help 
to  thousands  during  his  reign  of  thirty-five  years. 
He  cared  about  people.  No  hour  was  too  late, 
no  weather  too  bad,  nor  was  there  any  thought 
of  race  or  sect  if  he  could  help  those  in  need. 
This  man  had  famous  friends  and  qualities  of  a 
high  order;  he  might  have  risen  in  the  world, 
but  year  by  year  he  gave  his  life  for  others.  It 
is  this  passion  for  human  service  that  is  the 
greatest  strength  of  the  Irish  heart,  even  in  the 
corruption  of  politics,  and  learning  and  art  are 
poor  in  comparison.  They  buried  Father  Dor- 
ney  with  all  the  pomp  and  glory  of  a  mighty 
church,  but  his  soul  was  greater  than  any  ritual 
our  world  has  known. 


THEY   DIDN'T   LIKE    HIS   FIRST   NAME 

LAFE  YOUNG  has  been  arrested  by  the 
Austrians  as  a  spy.  That  episode  will  stick 
in  our  minds  as  the  most  serious  indictment  of 
Teutonic  intelligence  that  we  know.    Deceit  or 

[62] 


SOME     HUMAN     BEINGS 


any  kind  of  dissimulation  is  about  the  last  thing 
Lafayette  Young  is  capable  of.  If  the  Ger- 
mans really  want  to  hold  on  to  this  Iowa  Senator 
and  make  some  use  of  him,  let  them  lock  him 
up  in  a  comfortable  museum  as  the  real  thing 
in  the  line  of  that  much  sought  and  not  often 
seen  article — the  typical  American.  Senator 
Young  was  born  of  the  race  of  pioneer  farmers 
who  followed  the  frontier  from  western  Penn- 
sylvania through  Indiana  and  on  to  the  outer 
edge  of  the  prairie.  When  he  was  fifteen  years 
old  he  left  his  home  in  southwestern  Iowa  to 
go  to  the  war.  They  turned  him  down  because 
of  his  youth,  and  so  he  went  to  sticking  type  as 
a  printer's  devil  on  the  local  paper.  For  fifty 
years  now,  as  typesetter  and  editor,  he  has  been 
at  it,  and  all  that  half  century  he  has  been  ab- 
sorbing the  cultivation  that  passed  beneath  his 
fingers  and  increasing  his  native  store  of  shrewd- 
ness, insight,  good  humor,  kindliness,  and  all  the 
other  qualities  which  make  up  the  best  kind  of 
American.  Incidentally,  he  has  been  winning 
the  good  opinion  and  affection  of  his  neigh- 
bors. He  is  a  standpatter  and  does  not  walk 
the  path  in  politics  that  we  do;  if  more  of  the 
reformers  had  his  humanity  and  understanding, 
reform  would  get  along  faster  than  it  does.  We 
should  like  to  live  in  a  world  made  up  of  Lafe 
Youngs.  In  his  later  days  he  lets  his  son  and 
the  other  boys  run  his  paper  while  he  refreshes 

[63] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARK8 

his  mind  and  gets  well-earned  recreation  trav- 
eling abroad  reporting  wars  or  anything  else  that 
he  comes  in  contact  with.  There  are  two  fine 
types  of  the  older  American  generation  to  whom 
our  literature  has  not  even  yet  done  justice — 
the  country  judge  and  the  country  editor.  And 
Senator  Young  is  still  a  sublimated  country  edi- 
tor, even  if  he  does  own  the  Des  Moines  "Cap- 
ital" and  dine  with  prime  ministers.  If  we  should 
ever  happen  to  become  president  of  a  university, 
we  would  introduce  two  or  three  novel  features. 
One  of  them  would  be  to  hire  Lafe  Young 
just  to  sit  around  the  campus  in  the  sun,  letting 
the  young  men  soak  in  common  sense,  benevo- 
lence, and  good  morals  from  him. 


[64] 


IV 

A  DEMOCRAT  IN  THE  WHITE 
HOUSE 


W.    W.'S    CONVICTION 

WE  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Clarence  Sackett 
of  Newark,  N.  J.,  for  one  of  the  best  epi- 
grams we  have  seen  concerning  the  sit- 
uation in  Washington.    Mr.  Sackett  says  the 
epigram    came    originally    from    the    Boston 
(Mass.)  "Transcript": 

None  of  the  Democrats  in  Congress  have  the  courage  of 
their  own  convictions — but  they  all  have  the  courage  of 
Mr.  Wilson's  convictions. 


ONE    NEW    JERSEY    HOME 

A  HUNDRED  million  human  beings,  the 
citizens  of  a  free  commonwealth,  have 
chosen  their  ruler.  Into  his  hands  they  have 
given  imperial  powers.  They  have  made  him 
commander  in  chief  of  their  armies  and  their 
fleets.    They  have  clothed  him  with  an  authority 

[65] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

exceeding  an  English  king's.  They  have  bidden 
him  be  his  own  prime  minister  and  surround 
himself  with  his  own  counselors.  In  a  little 
frame  house  at  Princeton  (one  of  a  million  such 
modest  American  homes)  we  find  the  man  for 
whom  has  been  performed  this  miracle  of  de- 
mocracy. This  college  professor,  spectacled,  re- 
served of  speech,  undated  by  the  shouts  of  the 
multitude,  sober  with  the  dignity  of  the  mighty 
task  the  nation  has  enjoined  upon  him,  is  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States. 


JUST    AN    IMPRESSION 

HE  was  born  to  react  on  men  and  things, 
a  responsive  though  disciplined  being. 
And  he  seldom  comes  out  from  a  first-hand  ex- 
perience by  that  same  door  he  went  in.  He  will 
always  be  ready  to  believe  that  this  day  may 
bring  him  a  man  with  truth — truth  that  must 
henceforth  be  included  in  his  reckoning,  though 
it  had  not  been  incorporated  in  earlier  conclu- 
sions. Often  he  will  be  said  to  go  back  on  friends, 
because  the  friends  are  unwilling  to  go  forward 
with  him.  His  life  practice  is  the  fulfillment 
of  Bergson's  thesis,  that  the  future  is  not  wholly 
contained  in  the  past,  but  that  unexpected  ele- 
ments work  out  into  event ;  that  the  reason,  theo- 
rizing on  life,  has  to  reshape  its  judgments  and 

[66] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

revise  its  findings  as  life  itself  wins  over  new 
regions.  He  cannot  be  either  stampeded  or  re- 
strained. Like  a  well-spring,  he  overflows  into 
fertilizing  speech.  Fate  directed  it  into  the 
larger  channels  of  national  life.  But  it  would 
have  continued  to  flow  just  as  abundantly  in  the 
less-observed  currents  of  literature  and  lecture. 


ROTTEN    EGGS 

THE  strongest  figures  in  history — the  men 
who  have  led  great  political  reforms — 
knew  neither  kin  nor  friends  in  the  carrying  out 
of  state  programs.  Peel  became  estranged  from 
the  political  views  of  his  father,  to  whom  he 
owed  much.  Every  great  reform  in  England 
was  achieved  in  the  bitterness  of  broken  friend- 
ships. No  public  man  in  America  was  subjected 
to  the  indignities  that  at  times  were  heaped  on 
Gladstone  and  Peel.  Neither  public  insult  nor 
the  slights  of  old  friends  caused  them  to  waver. 
Perhaps  no  man  since  Lincoln  has  been  so 
heartily  abused  as  Roosevelt,  yet  Roosevelt  has 
never  been  "rotten  egged"  on  the  public  streets 
or  compelled  to  seek  the  shelter  of  a  hallway. 
"Abuse  is  a  pledge  that  you  are  felt,"  said  Emer- 
son; and  such  criticism  as  Woodrow  Wilson 
is  subjected  to  should  not  discourage  or  deflect 

[67] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

him.  If  our  President's  character  has  been 
molded  in  a  strong  matrix,  he  will  meet  the  issues 
and  conquer  them. 


TWO   YEARS    OF   WILSON 

AS  the  dust  and  noise  of  the  Sixty-third 
Congress  disappear,  it  becomes  possible 
to  look  over  what  has  been  done  in  the  first  half 
of  this  Presidential  term.  The  record  includes 
some  great  measures.  The  Underwood-Simmons 
Tariff  Act  marks  the  first  real  reduction  of  the 
protective  wall,  the  first  defeat  of  the  protection- 
ist beneficiaries  to  be  achieved  in  modern  times. 
It  does  not,  however,  put  the  tariff  matter  on 
a  scientific  basis  for  the  future.  The  Federal 
Reserve  Act  has  reorganized  our  banking  and 
currency  system  on  national  lines,  and  the  admin- 
istration of  the  act  has  been  put  into  the  hands 
of  able  and  forceful  men.  This  measure  is  the 
greatest  constructive  work  of  the  last  two  years 
and  will  stand  as  a  landmark  in  our  financial 
history.  The  business-reform  measures  which 
were  urged  as  equally  important  took  final  shape 
in  the  Clayton  Act  and  the  Federal  Trade  Com- 
mission. These  acts  invest  the  Government  with 
wide  and  not  very  clearly  defined  powers  of  busi- 
ness regulation,  but  the  appointments  to  the  com- 
mission are  men  much  less  widely  known  than 

[68] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

the  very  impressive  appointments  to  the  Federal 
Reserve  Board.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  present 
board  will  do  much  more  than  carry  on  the  use- 
ful work  of  the  Bureau  of  Corporations.  The 
income  tax  and  the  repeal  of  the  Panama  tolls 
exemption  were  two  other  results  of  Woodrow 
Wilson's  leadership  and  extraordinary  com- 
mand of  Congress.  This  legislative  record  is 
badly  marred  by  the  confused  foolishness  of  the 
ill-fated  shipping  bill,  which  wasted  the  energies 
of  Congress  for  some  final  weeks.  In  the  ensu- 
ing disorder  the  appropriation  bills  were  badly 
handled;  Congress  did  nothing  for  rural  credits, 
for  the  control  of  railroad-securities  issues,  or 
for  the  conservation  of  water-power  sites  and 
mineral  resources  under  appropriate  systems  of 
leasing.  These  conservation  measures  were  the 
work  of  Secretary  Lane.,  and  their  passage  was 
much  needed  for  the  development  of  the  West 
and  of  Alaska.  By  comparison  the  shipping  bill 
was  of  small  importance.  There  is  plenty  of 
work  ahead  for  the  Sixty-fourth  Congress,  also 
Democratic  in  both  Houses,  but  the  President's 
ascendency  over  it  may  not  be  so  complete,  and 
his  Administration  will  probably  be  judged  at 
the  polls  by  the  results  of  the  laws  already  se- 
cured. 


[69] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


AT    HOME    AND    ABROAD 

THE  great  war  has  thrown  into  high  relief 
some  of  the  President's  best  qualities  of 
action.  The  foozling  and  mild  uncertainty  which 
have  all  along  characterized  our  dealings  with 
the  Mexican  turmoil  have  not  been  in  evidence. 
The  difficult  and  delicate  work  of  steering  a 
straight  course  through  the  storm  has  been  per- 
formed by  capable  men.  The  proof  of  our  suc- 
cess is  in  the  naive  complaints  of  the  European 
jingoes  of  all  countries  and  in  the  praise  of  such 
men  as  Lord  Bryce.  The  conduct  of  our  Gov- 
ernment through  the  whole  crisis  has  won  the 
approval  and  confidence  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  to  a  remarkable  extent.  It  may 
well  be,  if  the  war  continues,  that  this  one  factor 
will  decide  the  next  election.  The  position  of 
our  country  as  the  friend  of  peace  and  justice 
has  been  further  maintained  by  the  renewal  of 
several  general  arbitration  treaties  and  by  the 
ratification  of  twenty-six  peace  commission 
treaties.  Against  this  record  must  be  set  the 
continued  failure  of  the  President  and  his  ad- 
visers to  understand  the  business  situation  and 
their  inability  either  to  deal  wisely  with  it  or  to 
let  it  alone.  Around  this  fact  clusters  the  oppo- 
sition to  Woodrow  Wilson's  reelection.  The 
country  has  no  intention  of  returning  to  the  old 

[70] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

days  of  Cannonism,  vested  interests,  and  fat 
frying.  Some  of  the  old-timers  may  slip  back 
to  Congress,  but  their  power  is  gone  and  their 
day  is  by.  What  the  United  States  wants  from 
now  on  is  a  sound,  just,  and  constructive  eco- 
nomic policy,  energetically  administered. 


HEAD-ON 

THE  most  important  issue  in  the  United 
States  is  brought  out  strongly  by  the  con- 
trast between  two  sentences  recently  printed  and 
very  generally  read.  The  first  is  from  a  discus- 
sion of  Mr.  Morgan's  death  in  the  most  widely 
circulated  American  newspaper: 

He  helped  to  make  competition  ridiculous  and  obsolete — 
the  best  work  of  his  day. 

The  other  sentence  is  detached  from  President 
Wilson's  book,  "The  New  Freedom" : 

I  intend  to  interfere  with  monopoly  just  as  much  as  pos- 
sible. 

Between  the  two  economic  ideas  defined  in 
these  two  sentences,  there  is  in  the  United  States 
at  this  moment  a  head-on  collision.  The  cleav- 
age, both  in  selfish  interest  and  disinterested 

[71] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

opinion,  between  these  two  ideas  is  as  wide  as 
the  nation,  and  the  question  which  shall  prevail 
affects  every  individual  in  the  most  vital  aspects 
of  life.  All  the  current  issues  of  thought  and 
discussion,  including  the  protective  tariff,  are 
merely  aspects  of  it,  and  the  great  bulk  of  the 
serious  writing  of  the  present  period  deals  di- 
rectly with  it.  As  usual,  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
truth  on  both  sides.  We  find  it  hard  to  believe 
that  the  experience  of  four  thousand  years  of 
human  history  must  be  thrown  on  the  scrap  heap 
for  an  economic  regime  which  is  less  than  twenty 
years  old  and  which  has  been  largely  bound 
up  with  one  strong  and  dominant  personality 
that  has  just  passed  from  the  world.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  know  that  every  invention,  every 
advance  in  science,  every  perfecting  addition  to 
the  telephone,  for  example,  enlarges  the  area 
over  which  one  able  man  can  diffuse  his  efficiency ; 
from  which  it  follows  that  the  stars  in  their 
courses  fight  for  larger  and  larger  units  of  in- 
dustry. And  of  one  thing  we  are  most  sure: 
the  restoration  of  competition,  so  far  as  it  may 
be  brought  about,  will  not  be  permitted  to  ex- 
press itself  in  harsher  conditions  of  life  for  the 
employed  class.  In  the  past,  the  intensity  of 
competition  has  always  expressed  itself  in  the 
employer  getting  more  out  of  labor  for  less 
money.  Against  that,  the  sentiment  of  the  age 
has  crystallized. 

[72] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 


A   LITTLE    SPACE   OF   CALM 

WHEN  the  President  of  the  United  States 
writes  an  essay,  the  essay-reading  public 
is  materially  enlarged.  Even  though  the  essay 
be  not  much  concerned  with  statecraft,  the  issue 
of  a  new  book  over  his  name  is  an  event;  yes, 
even  though  the  Epictetan  sentence,  "It  is  the 
discovery  of  what  they  can  not  do,  and  ought  not 
to  attempt,  that  transforms  reformers  into  states- 
men," must  have  been  written  before  Mr.  Wilson 
attained  the  highest  position  open  to  a  citizen 
of  the  New  World. 

"When  a  Man  Comes  to  Himself"  is  a  pol- 
ished piece  of  writing,  as  eminently  correct  in 
its  philosophy  as  in  its  phrasing.  No  one  can 
ever  quite  forget  the  ministerial  strain  in  Mr. 
Wilson's  heredity;  no,  not  even  the  acquired 
experience  and  urbanity  of  the  distinguished 
statesman  obscure  it.  But  we  like  the  Presi- 
dent's exposition  of  the  road  to  self-mastery,  a 
journey  of  disillusionment,  if  you  will,  but  no 
sad  road  for  good  walkers.  The  traveler  "sees 
himself  soberly,  and  knows  under  what  condi- 
tions his  powers  must  act,  as  well  as  what  his 
powers  are."  He  has  lost  some  of  his  preposses- 
sions and  learned  his  paces ;  "has  found  his  foot- 
ing, and  the  true  nature  of  the  'going'  he  must 
look  for  in  the  world."    Not  every  traveler  does, 

[73] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

indeed,  learn  either  his  route  or  his  own  resources 
and  limitations  for  the  journey  ahead;  "there  is 
no  fixed  time  in  a  man's  life  at  which  he  comes 
to  himself."  It  is  an  achievement  reserved  for 
him  whose  powers  begin  to  play  outward,  who 
has  come  to  love  the  task  at  hand,  not  because 
it  gains  him  a  livelihood,  but  because  it  makes 
him  a  life ;  and  this  is  the  lot  of  the  whole-souled 
and  all-minded  "who  can  detach  themselves  from 
tasks  and  drudgery  long  and  often  enough  to 
get — at  any  rate,  once  and  again — a  view  of 
the  proportions  of  life  and  of  the  stage  and  plot 
of  its  action."  For  a  man  who  lacks  the  courage 
or  energy  to  climb  and  see  life  from  a  point  higher 
than  that  of  every  day  there  is  danger,  not  only 
that  he  may  lose  his  way,  but  danger,  too,  that 
he  may  literally  become  that  "cog  in  the  ma- 
chine" of  which  we  all  have  heard. 

One  must  be  capable  of  this  occasional  self- 
detachment  just  as  he  must  normally  lead  a  social 
life.  "A  man  who  lives  only  for  himself  has  not 
begun  to  live.  And  assuredly  no  thoughtful  man 
ever  came  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  had  time 
and  a  little  space  of  calm  from  which  to  look 
back  upon  it,  who  did  not  know  and  acknowledge 
that  it  was  what  he  had  done  unselfishly  and 
for  others,  and  nothing  else,  that  satisfied  him 
in  the  retrospect  and  made  him  feel  that  he  had 
played  the  man."  Attainment  of  success  of  one 
kind  or  another,  acquisition  of  desired  posses- 

[74] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

sions,  follow  just  the  opposite  rule  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  perspective:  for  from  afar  they  loom 
much  larger  than  they  are,  viewed  close.  Love 
and  play  enter  into  life  no  less  than  labor — 
if  only  that  they  lend  labor  so  large  a  part  of 
its  significance.  Moreover,  "labor  for  oneself 
alone  is  like  exercise  in  a  gymnasium,"  and  the 
life  that  is  all  labor  is  scarcely  more  fit  to  serve 
as  a  model  than  the  life  that  is  all  lust,  being 
as  incomplete  as  the  life  of  the  idler  who  sees 
the  world  only  as  an  enlarged  country  club:  all 
putting  green,  cardroom,  grillroom,  and  front 
piazza. 

Devotion  without  drudgery,  service  without 
slavery:  that  is  the  Wilson  ideal.  The  Presi- 
dent's tract  is  excellent  and  flavored  with  sin- 
cerity. His  Cabinet  contains  several  notable  ex- 
horters,  but  in  temperateness,  no  less  than  in 
taste,  Mr.  Wilson  shines  out  (as  a  President 
should)  the  Administration's  most  accomplished 
homilist. 


A   UNITED   PEOPLE 

THE  President's  note  to  Germany,  signed 
by  his  Secretary  of  State,  is  much  more 
than  a  triumph  in  the  literature  of  diplomats ;  it 
is  a  statement,  at  once  direct  and  subtle,  of  the 
only  ground  Americans  would  have  their  Gov- 

[75] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

ernment  stand  upon  in  this  the  gravest  crisis  of 
the  national  life  since  Lincoln's  election,  fifty- 
five  years  since.  Upon  Germany  rests  the  re- 
sponsibility for  war  if  there  is  war ;  to  President 
Wilson  and  to  the  American  people  goes  the 
glory  of  peace  with  honor  if  our  hopes  are  ful- 
filled and  the  peace  is  kept.  The  President  re- 
cites without  rodomontade  or  rhetoric  Germany's 
successive  violations  of  American  rights  at  sea: 
the  loss  of  an  American  citizen  on  the  British 
passenger  steamship  Falaba,  torpedoed  on  March 
28;  the  aeroplane  attack  of  April  28  on  the 
American  steamer  Cushing;  the  torpedoing  of  the 
American  vessel  Ghilflight  on  May  1 ;  the  torpe- 
doing and  sinking  of  the  liner  Lusitania  on  May 
7.  In  a  few  weeks  more  than  one  hundred  Amer- 
ican citizens  lost  their  lives  as  a  direct  conse- 
quence of  the  German  submarine  war  upon  non- 
combatants,  a  form  of  warfare  inevitably  involv- 
ing, as  the  President's  note  points  out,  the  "vio- 
lation of  many  sacred  principles  of  justice  and 
humanity,"  and  our  specific  rights  upon  the  sea. 
The  dates  we  have  cited  bear  eloquent  testimony 
to  American  patience ;  if  war  is,  as  we  fervently 
believe,  an  outrage  to  the  temper  of  these  times, 
it  is  in  no  light  spirit  that  this  nation  has  come 
face  to  face  with  war:  stern  in  its  hatred  of  war's 
brutality,  but  no  less  stern  in  its  insistence  upon 
the  maintenance  of  America  as  a  nation.  There 
are  times  when  the  question  arises :  Is  this  coun- 

[76] 


A    DEMOCRAT    IN    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

try  truly  a  nation,  or  is  it  but  a  geograph- 
ical name  ? — a  place  where  people  earn  their  live- 
lihood? The  President's  note  and  its  acceptance 
in  a  spirit  of  calm  determination  by  all  Ameri- 
cans, of  whatever  party  and  whatever  birth — 
whether  they  live  by  the  Golden  Gate  or  in  the 
shadow  of  that  Statue  of  Liberty,  which  beckons 
the  ships  of  all  the  world  to  New  York  Harbor, 
whether  they  labor  in  the  wheat  fields  of  Kansas 
or  on  the  plantations  of  the  old  South — is  assur- 
ance that  we  are  indeed  a  united  nation;  united, 
too,  if  need  there  be,  in  a  just  war. 


A   MAN   AT   HIS   HIGHEST   POINT 

A  FAMOUS  and  oracular  Spaniard,  Balta- 
sar  Gracian,  writing  on  worldly  wisdom, 
has  declared  that  a  man  in  the  zenith  of  his  de- 
velopment may  be  known  by  the  purity  of  his 
taste,  the  clearness  of  his  thought,  the  maturity 
of  his  judgment,  the  firmness  of  his  will.  Yet, 
though  Gracian  was  a  churchman,  we  venture 
to  go  one  step  beyond  him  in  the  enumeration 
of  the  qualities.  That  man  we  believe  to  be  at 
his  highest  point  who,  attaining  the  top  of  his 
ambition,  sees  the  true  value  of  all  mundane 
ambition,  and  turns  his  energies  to  service  and 
self-sacrifice.  Some  of  President  Wilson's 
friends  have  declared  that  he  does  not  give  his 

[77] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

chances  in  1916  so  much  as  a  thought;  that  his 
one  desire  is  to  serve  the  country  to  the  utmost 
of  his  powers  in  the  term  before  him.  That, 
we  think,  is  a  cut  above  the  Spaniard's  hombre 
en  su  punto  and  a  pleasing  spectacle  to  the  Pres- 
ident's countrymen. 


[78] 


V 
YOUTH  AND  AGE 


THIS    IS    PHILOSOPHY 

YOUTH  is  desire.    The  Goncourt  brothers 
tell  of  an  old  man  at  the  Cafe  Riche  in 
Paris.    The  waiter,  reciting  his  list  of  din- 
ner dishes,  closed  with  the  formula:    "Monsieur 

wishes ?"    "I  wish,"  faltered  the  old  man.  "I 

wish — that  I  wished  something!"  Perhaps  in 
youth  the  old  man  had  not  wanted  the  right 
things. 


ON   KEEPING   YOUNG 

WE  have  been  talking  of  late  on  the  advan- 
tages of  being  young.  We  have  urged 
youth  to  go  ahead  and  be  itself,  although  it  needs 
no  urging.  But  how  can  we  prolong  that  youth  ? 
Is  there  a  set  age  when  it  must  disappear?  Need 
it  vanish  at,  say,  thirty  years?  Is  it  only  the 
dawn  flush?  There  is  a  way  provided  by  which 
the  sun  may  be  bidden  to  stand  still.    That  way 

[79] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

was  long  ago  shown  us  by  the  noblest  of  our  New 
Englanders.  Books,  travel,  society,  solitude — 
these  will  keep  a  man  young,  because  they  feed 
the  sources  of  his  life.  They  replenish  the  well- 
springs.  Ignorance,  cowardice,  drudgery  of 
spirit — these  dry  him  up  before  his  time. 


FULLNESS    OF   YEARS 

NOT  many  weeks  ago  we  published  an  edi- 
torial headed  "To  Keep  Young."  The 
most  interesting  letter  this  elicited  is  one  that 
comes  to  us  with  a  Brooklyn  (N.  Y.)  postmark: 

I  have  read  the  inclosed  item  with  interest.  Although  I 
am  seventy  years  old,  I  feel  as  young  as  I  did  twenty  years 
ago.  I  was  by  no  means  a  model  boy,  but  I  learned  early 
that  honesty  and  truthfulness  were  best  in  the  long  run.  I 
served  in  the  army  during  the  last  year  of  the  Civil  War; 
I  suffered  five  months'  semistarvation  in  a  Southern  prison, 
but,  except  for  occasional  attacks  of  chills  and  fever  for 
a  year  or  two  after  my  discharge,  I  have  had  no  illness  to 
speak  of  for  fifty  years.  Yet  I  do  not  take  any  special 
care  of  myself,  and  I  smoke  a  good  deal.  Four  years  ago 
I  applied  for  the  position  of  superintendent  of  a  large 
pressroom  in  this  city,  but  I  was  turned  down  as  being  too 
old.  Last  week  the  foreman  of  that  same  pressroom  told 
me  that  if  I  had  been  his  super,  it  would  have  been  money 
in  the  firm's  pocket.  So  there  you  are.  A  man  is  just  as 
old  as  he  feels  himself  to  be,  and  the  way  to  keep  young 
is  to  observe  the  Golden  Rule  and  stop  worrying  over  what 
we  cannot  help.  Archibald  McCowan. 

[80] 


YOUTH     AND     AGE 


No  doubt  some  of  our  readers  will  be  offended 
that  we  should  print  Mr.  Mc Cowan's  letter  with- 
out deleting  his  reference  to  tobacco.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  opinion,  however — well,  here  is  ours. 
Smoking  in  moderation  neither  notably  shortens 
a  man's  life,  nor  yet,  as  the  Italian  poet,  Fran- 
cisco Bicchi,  would  have  us  believe,  lengthens 
it.  Signor  Bicchi  is  in  his  one  hundred  and  third 
year,  and  ascribes  his  present  husky  state  to  the 
twin  facts  that  he  never  wears  woolen  under- 
clothes and  has  smoked  cigars  ever  since  he  was 
seven  years  old.  Signor  Bicchi  inhabits  Flor- 
ence, Italy.  Somewhere  in  Venice  or  Madrid  or 
Kokomo  there  is,  we  suspect,  a  centenarian  who 
ascribes  his  long  life  to  the  facts  that  he  never 
stained  his  lips  with  tobacco  and  has  always  worn 
a  red  flannel  shirt.  You  may  take  your  choice 
in  these  matters.  There  is,  anyway,  something 
idyllic  in  the  conversation  of  a  Florentine  like 
Bicchi  and  a  Brooklyn  man  like  Mr.  McCowan. 
Even  when  they  choose  cigars  and  underwear 
as  their  theme,  one  is  reminded  of  a  passage  in 
Samuel  Butler's  "Way  of  All  Flesh,"  in  praise 
of  fullness  of  years.  "Youth,"  wrote  Butler, 
"is,  like  spring,  an  overpraised  season.  .  .  .  The 
autumn  is  mellower,  and  what  we  lose  in  flowers 
we  more  than  gain  in  fruits.  Fontenelle,  at 
the  age  of  ninety,  being  asked  when  was  the  best 
time  of  his  life,  said  he  didn't  know  that  he  had 
ever  been  much  happier  than  he  then  was,  but 

[81] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

that  perhaps  his  best  years  had  been  when  he  was 
between  fifty-five  and  seventy-five." 

Happy  years,  Mr.  McCowan,  and  to  you, 
Signor  Bicchi,  good  smokes  and  many  of  them. 


TEMPORA   MUTANTUR 

1FEAR  the  fly  bearing  poison."  So  might 
have  sung  some  poet  of  past  days.  But  ap- 
parently he  did  not,  and  even  regarded  the  fly 
with  some  affection.  We  find  the  following 
lines: 

Busy,  curious,  thirsty  fly, 
Drink  with  me  and  drink  as  I; 
Freely,  welcome  to  my  cup, 
Could'st  thou  sip  and  sip  it  up. 
Make  the  most  of  life  you  may, 
Life  is  short  and  wears  away. 

They  are  attributed  to  William  Oldys,  anti- 
quary, bibliographer,  and  librarian,  who  was  born 
in  1696  and  died  in  1761.  So,  despite  his  gentle 
offer  to  share  his  cup  of  ale  with  a  fly,  he  lived 
to  the  good  age  of  sixty-five.  With  this  heroic 
example  before  our  eyes,  we  might  suggest  the 
folly  of  wisdom.  But  no — the  case  against  the 
flv  is  too  strong.    We  can't  take  a  chance. 


[82] 


YOUTH     AND     AGE 


THE    ETERNAL    SURPRISE 

CLEAR  the  way  for  the  young  men.  They 
are  entering  "the  strong,  flourishing,  and 
beautiful  age  of  man's  life."  They  decree  the 
changes.  The  map  of  the  world  may  be  rolled 
up — every  acre  tramped  upon  and  inhabited. 
But  still  they  come,  claiming  all  the  rights  of 
the  adventurer  and  pioneer.  Domains  must  be 
found  for  them  if  the  old  earth  has  gone  stale. 
If  the  life  of  danger  and  discovery  is  ended, 
then  they  will  turn  their  hand  against  our  secure 
world  and  refashion  the  pleasant  places.  They 
will  uproot  tradition  and  shatter  the  institutions. 
We  should  like  them  better  if  they  fitted  into 
our  scheme,  if  they  were  ruddy  and  cheery  and 
ended  there.  But  they  come  earnest  and  criti- 
cal. They  jeer  at  our  failures,  reject  our  com- 
promises. It  isn't  our  idea  of  youth,  our  peace- 
ful picture  of  what  youth  should  be.  Poets  sing 
it  as  if  it  were  a  pretty  thing,  the  gentle  pos- 
session of  a  golden  race  of  beings.  But  it  is  lusty 
with  power  and  disastrous  to  comfort.  Men  sigh 
for  it  as  if  it  had  vanished  with  Old  Japan  at 
the  hour  when  it  is  ramping  in  their  courtyard 
and  challenging  their  dear  beliefs.  They  are  wist- 
ful for  it  in  their  transfigured  memory,  and  they 
curse  it  in  their  councils.     For  youth  never  is 

[83] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

what  the  elders  would  have  it.  It  does  unaccept- 
able things,  while  age  stands  blinking  and  sor- 
rowful. It  is  unruly,  turbulent  power  on  its 
endless  track. 


[84] 


VI 
THE   BOOKS   WE   READ 

THE    CRITIC'S    FUNCTION 

SOME  one  says  that  the  critic  has  the  same 
relation  to  literature  that  a  flea  has  to  a  dog 
— he  infests  it  and  lives  off  it  without  either 
advancing  or  adorning  it.     But  in  our  opinion 
it  should  be  added  that  every  once  in  a  while 
he  makes  the  animal  scratch  lively. 

•     • 

CULTURE 

CULTURE  is  a  word  we  often  fight  shy  of 
by  reason  of  certain  unfortunate  connota- 
tions. Here  is  a  masterly  definition  of  culture 
by  the  English  philosopher,  Bosanquet  : 

The  habit  of  a  mind  instinct  with  purpose,  cognizant  of 
a  tendency  and  connection  in  human  achievement,  able  and 
industrious  in  discerning  the  great  from  the  trivial. 

Twenty-seven  words  are  enough  to  phrase  this 
noble  conception  of  a  noble  quality. 

[85] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


LOOKING   FORWARD 

OUT  of  the  Middle  West  rises  a  man  with 
a  vision.  He  has  read  books  and  people 
and  movements,  and  he  has  pondered  these  books 
and  the  things  he  has  seen  and  heard  and  the 
people  he  has  known.  He  has  climbed  to  the 
high  places  that  give  a  view  of  far  countries,  and 
he  tells  us  what  he  has  seen — simply,  unpretend- 
ingly. His  name  is  Herbert  Quick,  and  he 
calls  his  book  "On  Board  the  Good  Ship  Earth." 
"We  are  all  in  the  same  boat,"  he  begins,  and 
his  point  of  view  throughout  is  international. 
The  problems  of  life — not  the  personalities  of  the 
moment — are  Mr.  Quick's  materials;  and  his 
reader  is  likely  to  be  amazed  at  the  oneness  of 
it  all:  Man  history;  land  history;  the  commis- 
sariat; the  metals  in  the  hold  and  the  necessity 
for  their  being  used  socially,  not  selfishly ;  trans- 
portation ;  overpopulation ;  the  various  race  ques- 
tions; patriotism  (virtue  or  vice?);  militarism 
and  its  possibilities;  democracy  and  that  world 
federation  which,  by  this  prophecy,  we  shall  see 
before  the  sun  goes  cold  and  the  lights  of  the 
"Good  Ship  Earth"  are  finally  extinguished. 
The  fundamental  problem  of  society,  to  Mr. 
Quick  as  to  Henry  George,  is  land;  not  only 
its  distribution  and  the  apportionment  of  its 
rents,  but  its  proper  use  and  its  continued  fer- 

[86] 


THE     BOOKS     WE     BEAD 


tility.  Here  is  an  author  who  makes  you  a  more 
intelligent  passenger — whether  you  agree  or  dis- 
agree with  all  his  chapters.  It  is  Hebbebt 
Quick's  distinction  that  he  can  discuss  big  mat- 
ters in  simple  language — making  a  philosopher 
of  his  reader  without  that  reader  knowing  what 
is  happening  to  him.  But  we  are  all  of  us,  prop- 
erly, philosophers;  only,  like  M.  Joubdatn 
(prosateur),  we  never  knew  it. 


ONE   WOMAN'S   WIT 

T  7ERY  clever  persons  put  together  the  mag- 
V  azine  called  "Current  Opinion,"  but  they 
show  a  quaint  lack  of  literary  understanding 
when  they  head  an  article  about  Jane  Austen  : 
"Is  the  Greatest  Humorist  in  English  Literature 
a  Woman?"  Of  course  they  must  know  better. 
Jane  Austen  is,  if  you  like,  the  most  charming 
of  British  humorists,  in  some  ways  the  most  de- 
lightful commentator  and  dialogist  of  all  writers 
in  English — but  she  herself  would  have  been  the 
first  to  cry  out:  "Greatest  nothing!"  In  her 
pages,  as  one  reads  in  "Current  Opinion"  itself, 
"the  seven  deadly  sins  fade  into  one — ill  taste." 
Jane  Austen  is  not  to  be  measured  in  greatness, 
but  in  consummate,  delicious,  and  quite  perfect 
littleness.  Those  who  echo  Macaulay's  com- 
parison of  her  characters  and  Shakespeabe's 

[87] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

generally  miss  the  point  of  the  British  essayist's 
remarks.  Hers  is  the  "Little  Theater" ;  her  char- 
acters, most  of  them  conventional  to  a  degree,  are 
nicely  little  in  proportion.  In  the  novel  of  Jane 
Austen  religion  is  represented  by  formalism; 
passion  by  cordiality ;  every  great  emotion  by  its 
diminutive.  Do  we  regret  the  lack  of  the  re- 
forming instinct  in  Jane  Austen?  Not  in  the 
least.  This  author's  place  is  unique.  She  under- 
stood the  country  gentry  of  her  times  as  no  one 
else  who  wrote  understood  them;  and  people  of 
to-day,  too,  can  find  themselves  reflected  in  the 
mirrors  of  "Pride  and  Prejudice,"  and  "Emma," 
and  "Sense  and  Sensibility."  Yet  it  is  absurd 
to  use  the  word  "greatest"  or  "great"  or  "great- 
ness" in  discussing  the  creator  of  Elizabeth 
Bennet.  Literary  distinction  she  has,  this  kindly 
satirist  of  men  and  manners  and  the  marriage 
market ;  delight  she  brings  to  the  fireside  reader, 
but  greatness — would  you  speak  of  the  greatness 
of  a  miniature  or  the  greatness  of  a  Pekingese? 


MORE  ABOUT  JANE  AUSTEN 

LATELY  we  took  a  vacation  from  politics, 
business,  and  morality  long  enough  to 
phrase  some  ideas  about  Jane  Austen.  Those 
remarks  provoke  one  of  Miss  Austen's  ad- 
mirers,  who   thinks  we  fail  to   do   justice  to 

[88] 


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the  novelist's  subtlety  and  humor.  "Was  there 
ever,"  our  correspondent  asks,  "any  one  who  so 
beautifully  renders  match-making  mothers, 
aunts,  and  patronesses  of  unmarried  young  la- 
dies? Was  there  ever  a  gentler  satirist  or  one 
more  perfect  in  her  representation  of  quite  silly 
women — some  of  them,  like  Mrs.  Bennet  and 
Mrs.  Jennings  and  the  older  Mrs.  Dashwood, 
women  of  great  good  nature  ?  Do  you  remember 
Mrs.  Ferrars,  in  'Sense  and  Sensibility' — her 
whom  we  meet  as  Edward's  mother  at  Lady 
Middleton's  party?"  One  paragraph  is  enough 
for  the  full-length  portrait: 

Mrs.  Ferrars  was  a  little  thin  woman,  upright,  even  to 
formality,  in  her  figure,  and  serious,  even  to  sourness,  in 
her  aspect.  Her  complexion  was  sallow  and  her  features 
small,  without  beauty  and,  naturally,  without  expression; 
but  a  lucky  contraction  of  the  brow  had  rescued  her  coun- 
tenance from  the  disgrace  of  insipidity  by  giving  it  the 
strong  characters  of  pride  and  ill  nature.  She  was  not  a 
woman  of  many  words,  for,  unlike  people  in  general,  she 
proportioned  them  to  the  number  of  her  ideas. 

This  quotation  brings  out  the  point  we  made 
in  referring  to  Jane  Austen  as  greatest  of 
the  Little  Masters.  The  acid  of  her  novels  saves 
them  from  any  flatness.  For  us  there  has  always 
been  a  piquant  contrast  between  Jane  Austen's 
fictions  and  those  of  Charlotte  Bronte.  Which 
author  is  preferred,  we  wonder,  by  such  novel 

[89] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

readers  of  to-day  as  still  read  old-time  books? 
Do  those  who  swear  by  Dickens  as  the  greatest 
British  novelist  choose  the  author  of  "Jane 
Eyre,"  and  Thackeray's  friends  join  us  in  elect- 
ing the  delicious  satirist  of  "Northanger  Ab- 
bey?" 


WHICH? 

WILL  the  final  verdict  on  George  Ber- 
nard Shaw  rate  him  as  wag  or  as  sage? 
The  mere  query  will  horrify  those  who  rank  him 
as  seer-prophet-reformer-propagandist-satirist- 
philosopher  playwright.  Those  are  precisely  the 
people  we  want  to  horrify.  In  their  way  they 
are  as  stupid  as  the  lady  we  overheard  at  one 
performance  of  "Androcles  and  the  Lion" — a 
lady  wearing  a  high-cut  voice  with  broad  vowel 
trimmings,  and  remarking:  "I  should  like  Ber- 
nard Shaw  so  much  better  if  only  he  weren't 
so  facetious."  So  many  people  will  not  allow 
an  author  to  have  his  fun  and  let  it  go  at  that. 
We  have  nothing  against  Shaw  when  he  is  seri- 
ous— though  you  never  can  tell ;  but  it  is  enough 
for  us  to  sit  back  in  our  seats  at  "Fanny's  First 
Play"  or  "Androcles"  or  "The  Doctor's  Di- 
lemma" and  to  laugh  wholesome  laughter.  Wag 
or  sage? 

Almost   as   impossible   as   those   who   claim 
[90] 


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everything  for  Shaw  are  the  ones  who  will 
grant  him  nothing.  We  know  a  scientist 
who  claims  that  he  could  write  better  plays  than 
Shaw  if  he  would  abandon  himself  to  it;  but 
two  points  are  noteworthy :  the  scientist  has  never 
written  plays,  and  he  is  an  Englishman — not 
Irish,  like  Wilde  and  Shaw  (Wilde's  pupil). 
When  folks  fulminate  against  Bernard-through- 
the-looking-glass,  we  feel  with  Chicago's  poet 
laureate,  Bert  Leston  Taylor: 

Let  critics  chew  your  plays  and  find 
Fit  matter  for  their  trade  of  whacking; 

Let  pundits  analyze  your  mind, 

And  say  that  this  or  that  is  lacking. 

For  critic  sass  or  pundit  gas 

I  do  not  care  a  week-old  cruller: 
I   only  know  that  when  you  pass  , 

This  world  will  be  a  damsite  duller. 


DO    YOU    READ    POETRY? 

SO  Woodrow  Wilson  composes  his  mind  o' 
nights    by    reading    some    poetry    before 
"turning  in."    Do  you? 

Evidently  poets  don't  read  it,  for  here  is  Louis 
Untermeyer  blaming  Felicia  Hemans's  "stern 
and  rock-bound  coast"  on  defenseless  Longfel- 
low.    Evidently  editors  don't,  for  here  is  the 

[91] 


NATIONAL     FLOOD MAEKS 

Mobile  "Item"  attributing  Henley's  "I  Am  the 
Captain  of  My  Soul"  to  Phcebe  Caey,  and  the 
New  York  "Call"  loudly  demanding  who  wrote 
"Pleasures  Are  Like  Poppies  Spread"?  Fortu- 
nately, however,  there  are  comparatively  few  edi- 
tors in  the  world.  Says  the  "Independent": 
"The  reason  why  people  are  taking  more  interest 
in  poetry  is  because  poetry  is  taking  more  in- 
terest in  people."  The  "Independent"  has  in 
mind  John  Masefield  and  W.  W.  Gibson.  We 
should  add  the  Chicago  lawyer,  Edgae  Lee  Mas- 
ters, whose  "Spoon  River  Anthology,"  first  pub- 
lished in  "Reedy 's  Mirror,"  has  made  such  a  stir. 
Poets  like  Masefield  and  Gibson,  and,  among 
Americans,  Robert  Frost  and  Edgar  Masters, 
are  really  short-story  writers  who  use  verses 
to  tell  their  stories:  generally  rather  grim  ones. 
It  is  an  interesting  experiment;  no  newer,  to 
be  sure,  than  Crabbe  and  Byron  and  the  Greek 
anthologists ;  if  it  seems  new  to-day,  that  is  partly 
because  its  materials  are  unspoiled  by  handling. 
Yet  somehow  we  doubt  that  Woodrow  Wil- 
son reads  much  of  Gibson  and  Masters  when 
evening  comes.  We  don't  know,  but  we  fancy 
that  Mr.  Wilson  finds  more  delight  in  Words- 
worth at  his  best,  or  exclaims  with  the  poet 
who  writes  of  Shakespeare: 

Oh,  let  me  leave  the  plains  behind, 
And  let  me  leave  the  vales  below; 
[92] 


THE     BOOKS    WE    READ 


Into  the  highlands  of  the  mind, 
Into  the  mountains  let  me  go. 

Here  are  the  heights,  crest  beyond  crest, 
With  Himalayan  dews  impearled; 

And  I  will  watch  from  Everest 

The  long  heave  of  the  surging  world. 


ANOTHER   LITERARY    REFERENDUM 

THE  New  York  "Times"  has  put  to  a  num- 
ber of  distinguished  authors  the  question: 
What  is  the  best  short  poem  in  English?  Judg- 
ing by  the  answers  (some  of  them  really  intelli- 
gent), the  adjective  "short"  is  used,  not  to  limit 
the  choice  to  quatrains  and  limericks — Mr.  Ches- 
terton names  "There  Was  a  Young  Lady  of 
Niger"  for  first  choice,  Blake's  "Tiger,  Tiger, 
Burning  Bright"  as  number  two — but  to  frighten 
off  those  whose  predilections  run  to  Milton's 
"Paradise  Lost"  and  Bailey's  "Festus."  As  it 
is,  Keats  scores  heavily  in  the  "Times's"  sympo- 
sium, and  Shelley's  "Skylark"  wins  four  bal- 
lots out  of  twenty-five  (some  of  them  blank) ; 
and  Wordsworth,  of  course,  is  in  the  running. 
It  serves  as  a  pretext  for  filling  two  newspaper 
pages  in  midsummer — and  for  reprinting  some 
beautiful  uncopyrighted  verse.  But  as  Thomas 
Hardy  remarks,  there  is  no  "best"  poem  in  Eng- 
lish, long  or  short.    It  would  be  more  to  the  point 

193] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

to  ask  persons  of  judgment  what  is  their  favorite 
poem.  And  this  question  might  be  expected  to 
draw  forth  a  larger  number  of  answers,  titles 
chosen  from  a  wider  range  of  verse. 

Reading  in  Edward  Dowden's  letters  the 
other  day  (two  volumes  of  them  have  just  been 
issued,  and  they  are  well  worth  reading) ,  we  hap- 
pened on  this  thought  upon  this  very  subject — 
a  thought  registered  in  1865  at  Cork: 

Mr.  Robert  Browning  has  a  new  poem  forthcoming. 
Still,  with  quite  enough  of  admiration  for  Robert  Brown- 
ing, I  find  out  every  year  more  how  the  greatest  men  are 
the  ones  to  live  by — Shakespeare,  Goethe,  and  (from  the 
little  I  have  read  in  Carey)  Dante,  and  by  all  means 
Cervantes — then  Wordsworth,  Spenser,  Chaucer,  Mil- 
ton, Burns,  Keats,  Tennyson,  Browning,  Shelley — 
and  then  every  honest  poet,  who  need  not  be  great  but 
must  be  sincere,  as  Clough,  Crabbe,  and  twenty 
more.  .  .  .  One  always  begins  with  the  second  class  where 
one  can  have  favorites,  which  is  impossible  with  the  four 
or  five  tiptop  human  beings — anyone  can't  make  a  favorite 
of  the  ocean  or  the  sky,  although  they  are  infinitely  more 
to  us  than  forest  trees  or  flowers.  "Deep-browed  Homer" 
should  have  been  put  among  my  first  men. 

Dowden  was  writing  informally  to  his  brother, 
and  this  was  before  he  made  Walt  Whitman's 
acquaintance,  or  the  American's  name  would 
surely  have  made  its  appearance  in  his  list — as 
it  doesn't  in  the  New  York  "Times's."  But 
these  lists  are  midsummer  madness  at  best. 

[94] 


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THE    NEW   LAUREATE 

MOST  appropriate  is  the  choice  of  Robert 
Bridges  as  British  Poet  Laureate.  The 
post  is  a  tradition — some  say  an  outworn  tradi- 
tion— and  therefore  it  is  properly  accorded  to 
a  traditionalist.  No  one  pretends  that  the  official 
poet  of  the  English  court  is  the  greatest  or  even 
the  most  popular  living  poet ;  Wordsworth  and 
Tennyson  held  the  title,  but  so,  for  the  matter 
of  that,  did  Eusden  and  Pye.  Mr.  Bridges 
is  a  far  better  poet  than  either  of  these  two  for- 
gotten nonentities,  or  than  Alfred  Austin,  his 
immediate  predecessor,  though  his  profession  was 
medicine  before  it  was  poetry,  and  his  circle 
of  readers  during  thirty-odd  years  of  verse  pub- 
lishing has  been  severely  limited.  Limited,  too, 
by  the  nature  of  the  verse  itself,  for,  while  John 
Masefield  and  W.  W.  Gibson  have  gone  be- 
yond Kipling  even  in  suiting  their  verse  to  the 
temper  of  the  age,  Mr.  Bridges  is  ever  the  un- 
compromising scholar,  the  exponent  of  the  long- 
established  ideals  of  English  poetry.  The  new 
laureate  would  have  been  almost  as  much  at  home 
in  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century  as  in 
our  twentieth ;  and  this  is  not  simply  because  he 
writes  triolets  and  translations  from  Apuleius 
and  imitations  of  Vergil.  It  is,  too,  the  spirit 
of  the  man — his  philosophic  composition.    One 

[95] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAKKS 

i 

could  imagine  some  of  Mr.  Bridges'  work  to  have 
been  done  by  John  Keats  ;  but  verse  movements 
of  a  later  time  than  Keats's  are  as  if  they  were 
not,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned.  The  poet  laure- 
ate is  old-fashioned  enough  to  be  a  poet  of  beauty 
in  an  age  when  art  sniffs  at  those  manifestations 
of  beauty  readily  understood  by  the  mob: 

I  love  all  beauteous  things; 

I  seek  and  adore  them; 
God  hath  no  better  praise, 
And  man  in  his  hasty  days 

Is  honored  for  them. 

I,  too,  will  something  make, 

And  joy  in  the  making, 
Altho'  to-morrow  it  seem 
Like  the  empty  words  of  a  dream 

Remembered  on  waking. 


THE    READER    AS    DRAMATIS    PERSONA 

THE  minds  of  certain  men  move  too  quickly 
for  the  common  grasp — their  remarks  need 
footnotes.  When  such  characters  are  taken  over 
into  literature,  the  author  must  translate  them  to 
the  reader.  Plato  and  Conan  Doyle  have  hit 
upon  the  same  device.  Each  presents  a  star 
character  whose  mental  processes  are  too  deep 
and  speedy  for  everyday  intelligence.    Socrates 

[96] 


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and  Sherlock  Holmes  have  this  much  in  com- 
mon: they  live  in  a  higher  altitude  than  the  rest 
of  us.  They  toss  off  dark  Orphic  sayings.  Their 
lightning  deductions  from  cigar  ashes  or  the  laws 
of  beauty  baffle  the  rank  outsider.  But  the  wily 
author  takes  pity  on  us  groundlings ;  we  are  taken 
over  into  the  body  of  the  narrative  and  play  our 
part  there  with  the  best.  As  Socrates  rises  to 
the  height  of  his  great  argument,  some  stupid 
fellow,  like  Polus,  interrupts  him  with  a  query 
that  checks  the  eloquence,  but  clears  the  vague- 
ness. He  is  sure  to  ask  the  very  question  you 
are  bursting  with.  Socrates  stoops  to  answer, 
and  you  are  satisfied ;  for  Polus  is  YOU.  When 
Sherlock  Holmes  tells  a  man's  life  history  from 
his  necktie,  we  acknowledge  our  density,  but  won- 
der how  it  is  done.  And  then  Dr.  Watson 
voices  our  bewilderment  and  an  explanation  is 
obtained.  At  times  the  author  does  us  an  in- 
justice, and  these  vicarious  sacrifices  are  even 
thicker  than  the  reader.  But,  in  general,  one 
is  heartily  thankful  for  the  interlocutor. 


KENTUCKY'S    POET 

KENTUCKY  has  lost  her  poet.  In  the  pass- 
ing of  Madison  Cawein,  one  of  this  coun- 
try's sweetest  voices  is  hushed.  Cawein  shared 
the  lot  of  earlier  Southern  poets  in  never  achiev- 

[97] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

ing  a  nation-wide  popularity.  Sweet  Sixteen 
did  not  paste  his  verses  in  her  scrapbook,  ardent 
undergraduates  did  not  quote  him,  clubs  of  idle 
women  never  searched  for  his  concealed  mean- 
ings. Neither  did  national  topics  nor  pulsing 
human  passions  move  him  to  such  quick  response 
as  did  Nature — the  world  of  birds  and  bees,  of 
apple  blossoms  and  wood  violets.  He  was  a 
child  of  the  Wordsworthian  tradition.  But  as 
Mr.  Howells  once  said,  though  his  landscape 
might  contain  no  human  figure,  it  "thrilled  with 
a  human  presence."  In  seven  lines  Cawein 
summed  up  a  large  part  of  his  own  philosophy: 

Could  we  attain  that  Land  of  Faerie, 
Here  in  the  flesh,  what  starry  certitudes 

Of  loveliness  were  ours!  what  mastery 
Of  beauty  and  the  dream  that  still  eludes! 

What  clearer  vision!     Ours  were  then  the  key 

To  Mystery,  that  Nature  jealously 

Locks  in  her  heart  of  hearts  among  the  woods. 

In  the  flesh  he  came  close  to  attainment  of 
that  enchanted  domain.  In  the  spirit  he  still 
leads  on  toward  those  starry  certitudes. 


THE    POET'S    WAY 

SYMBOLISM  is  one  of  the  riskiest  tools  in 
the  literary  craftsman's  stock.    He  may  so 
manipulate  it  as  to  produce  very  stimulative  and 

[98] 


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inspiring  effects.  Or  its  keen  edge  may  slip  and 
cut  him.  Of  course,  by  symbolism  we  mean  just 
what  the  dictionary  does:  something  "chosen  to 
typify  or  represent  some  idea  or  quality  in  some- 
thing else."  It  may  be  little  or  big:  the  squirrel's 
revolving  cage  to  represent  modern  metropoli- 
tan life,  or  Maeterlinck's  quest  for  the  Blue 
Bird  to  typify  the  search  for  happiness.  Mad- 
ison Cawein,  of  whom  we  spoke  the  other  day, 
wrote  a  little  poem  called  "The  Father" : 

There  is  a  hall  in  every  house, 

Behind  whose  wainscot  gnaws  the  mouse; 

Along  whose  sides  are  empty  rooms, 

Peopled  with  dreams  and  ancient  dooms. 

When  down  this  hall  you  take  your  light, 

And  face,  alone,  the  hollow  night, 

Be  like  the  child  who  goes  to  bed, 

Though  faltering  and  half  adread 

Of  something  crouching  crookedly 

In  every  corner  he  can  see 

Ready  to  snatch  him  into  gloom, 

Yet  goes  on  bravely  to  his  room, 

Knowing,  above  him,  watching  there, 

His  Father  waits  upon  the  stair. 

Even  for  the  picture  of  childhood  it  sketches, 
this  poem  justifies  itself.  But  it  takes  on  a  finer 
significance  when  one  reads  into  it  the  conception 
of  a  protecting  power  which  watches  over  us 
as  we  falter  along  the  forbidding  corridors  of 
life.    Here  is  symbolism  in  its  true  estate. 

[99] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


THE    NATIONAL   LAUNDRY 

IT  is  fine  for  society  that  murder  will  out.  But 
when  it  keeps  on  outing  and  outing,  and  we 
ought  to  be  paying  attention  to  other  things,  it 
becomes  wearisome.  The  dragnet  by  which  we 
are  making  the  present  enormous  Mulhaxjl  of 
murderers  of  the  public  weal  is  of  the'  sort  which 
discovers  the  crime  after  the  death  of  the  per- 
petrators, or  when  the  statute  of  limitations  has 
run.  Nemesis,  of  course,  has  her  duty  to  per- 
form— but  why  not  stop  once  the  record  is  set 
straight?  The  implacability  of  fate  reminds  us 
somehow  of  the  Cockney  lyric  which  begins: 

There  was  a  bloody  sparrow 

Lived  in  a  blooming  spout; 
There  came  a  blooming,  bloody  rain 

And  washed  the  beggar  out! 

We  may  have  misquoted,  but  the  moral  will  be 
plain  to  the  Hon.  James  E.  Watson  and  all 
the  other  washed-out  sparrows.  The  rest  of  the 
poem  escapes  us,  though  we  try  with  ineffable 
longing  to  recall  it.  None  of  the  anthologies 
avail.  Will  some  well-read  friend  come  to  the 
rescue?  Poetry  is  a  safe  refuge  when  the  na- 
tional laundry  fills  the  whole  house  with  steam 
and  suffocation. 

[100] 


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THE    SPARROW   AND    THE    SPOUT 

COOPERATION  is  civilization.  True  co- 
operation does  wonders.  A  short  time  ago 
we  asked  our  readers  for  some  lines  of  a  death- 
less lyric  which  we  had  partially  forgotten.  The 
response  was  surprising.  We  received  not  only 
the  forgotten  lines,  but  so  many  readings  of  them 
and  so  many  variants  of  our  own  quotation  that 
we  are  now  prepared  to  compile  a  variorum  edi- 
tion of  "The  Sparrow  and  the  Spout."  Some 
of  the  versions  are  so  defective  metrically  that  we 
feel  sure  they  are  corrupt.  We  offer  the  follow- 
ing as  the  true,  authentic,  and  definitive  version : 

A  bloody,  bloomin'  sparrow 

Lived  in  a  bleedin'  spout; 
There  came  a  bloomin',  bloody  rain 

And  drove  the  beggar  out! 

The  bloomin',  bleedin'  sun  came  out 

And  dried  the  bloody  rain, 
And  the  bloody,  bloomin'  blighter 

Went  up  the  spout  again! 

This  seems  to  us  a  perfect  lyric.  It  has  that 
compression  which  Emerson  notes  as  the  char- 
acteristic of  all  great  poetry.  It  tells  of  the 
tragedy  of  life  and  of  fortitude  in  meeting  it. 
How  perfectly  it  displays  the  richness  of  the 

[101] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

Cockney  dialect  in  adjectives!  But  has  it  a 
moral?  We  applied  the  first  quatrain  to  some 
of  the  sparrows  who  were  washed  out  by  the 
Mulhall  revelations.  Some  of  our  friends  sug- 
gest that  it  is  a  literary  boomerang  in  that  the 
last  lines  imply,  with  that  mystic  insight  which 
inheres  in  all  great  art,  that  Mr.  Watson  of 
Indiana  after  the  shower  will  reenter  the  bloom- 
ing spout.  There  is  much  force  in  this;  but  we 
prefer  to  construe  the  phrase  in  its  political  con- 
nection according  to  the  Yankee  meaning  of  "up 
the  spout."  We  believe  the  washed-out  political 
sparrows  are  up  the  spout  permanently. 


AMERICAN    BALLADRY 

THE  sparrow  poetry  reminds  us  that  the 
true  ballad — the  folk  song  which  was  never 
written,  but  has  passed  from  mind  to  mind  by 
oral  tradition — is  not  an  American  institution. 
Who  knows  of  any  real  American  folk  songs? 
Dr.  Lomax  of  Texas  and  Harvard  has  collected 
"Cowboy  Ballads";  and  the  professors  of  the 
Universities  of  Missouri  and  Virginia,  who  have 
been  for  some  years  collecting  verses  which  have 
some  right  to  be  called  American  ballads,  are 
doing  a  most  interesting  work.  It  is  probable 
that  in  the  remoter  regions  of  Missouri  is  to  be 
found  the  largest  body  of  real  American  balladry 

[102] 


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in  existence.  It  should  be  preserved.  Many 
songs  which  have  taken  on  an  American  form, 
and  are  still  sung  among  the  mountaineers  of  the 
South  and  the  Southwest,  have  been  traced  back 
to  old  English  origins.  There  is  one  which  sings 
the  death  of  Jesse  James — with  sympathy  for 
the  bandit.    Two  lines  read  as  follows : 

It  was  for  a  big  reward  that  little  Robert  Ford 
Shot  Jesse  James  on  the  sly! 

This  is  as  well  entitled  to  a  place  in  balladry 
as  the  songs  of  Dick  Turpin,  Robin  Hood, 
or  the  Roving  Blade  of  Dublin.  After  the  war 
some  ballads  were  evolved  out  of  the  terrible  con- 
ditions on  the  border.  One  is  the  lament  of  a 
Missouri  Confederate  over  the  Lost  Cause.  It 
is  not  exactly  an  evidence  of  Reconstruction, 
for  it  is  profane  in  spots,  and  has  passages  like 
this: 

.  .  .  We  killed  three  hundred  thousand 

Befo'  they  conquered  us ! 
I  got  the  rheumatism, 

A-fightin'  in  the  snow — 
And  I'd  like  to  take  my  musket, 

An'  go  an'  kill  some  mo' ! 
And  I'd  like  to  take  my  musket, 

An'  go  an'  kill  some  mo'! 

Perhaps  some  of  our  readers  are  able  to  give 
us  the  complete  version  of  this  also.    We  cannot 

[103] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

>— <— —— — ■■—  -^— —  i^— 

promise  to  print  it — this  is  a  family  journal — 
but  the  verses  should  be  preserved.  They  ex- 
press an  epoch. 


THE    GREAT   DIVIDE 

TO  define  in  specific  terms  the  difference  be- 
tween good  poetry  and  bad  has  always 
proved  baffling.  The  best  that  can  be  done  is 
to  compare  that  which  is  beyond  doubt  gold  with 
that  which  is  merely  tinsel.  Opportunity  for 
actual  parallel-column  comparison  is  rare,  but  it 
sometimes  occurs.  At  this  season  it  is  good  to 
recall  Emerson's  lines: 


Daughters  of  Time,  the  hypocritic  Days, 

Muffled  and  dumb  like  barefoot  dervishes, 

And  marching  single  in  an  endless  file, 

Bring  diadems  and  fagots  in  their  hands. 

To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, 

Bread,  kingdoms,  stars,  and  sky  that  holds  them  all. 

I,  in  my  pleached  garden,  watched  the  pomp, 

Forgot  my  morning  wishes,   hastily 

Took  a  few  herbs  and  apples,  and  the  Day 

Turned  and  departed  silent.     I,  too  late, 

Under  her  solemn  fillet  saw  the  scorn. 

One  would  be  rash  to  dispute  the  quality  of 
this.  But  the  other  day,  glancing  over  a  col- 
lection of  songs,  we  came  upon  the  following 

[104] 


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effusion,  signed  M.  A.  L.  Lane  and  entitled 
"The  Day's  Gift": 

In  solemn  file  the  days  go  by; 

Each  bears  a  golden  token; 
We  grasp  some  trifle  as  they  pass, 

And  grieve  when  it  is  broken. 

They  offer  to  the  earnest  soul 

The  chance  of  high  endeavor, 
Rare  moments  which  with  good  are  fraught, 

And  then  are  gone  forever. 

With  muffled  step  and  shrouded  form 
Beyond  our  ken  they  take  their  way; 

They  give  no  sign,  betray  no  scorn, 
Whatever  price  our  lives  must  pay. 

We  have  no  intention  of  discussing  M.  A.  L. 
Lane  and  the  delicate  question  of  plagiarism. 
It  would  not  be  difficult,  but  the  task  is  unpal- 
atable. We  merely  call  attention  to  a  great 
thought  expressed  in  a  great  way  and  the  same 
thought  in  an  insipid  and  banal  form. 


GEOGRAPHY 

THOUGH  the  years  are  long  distant,  we  can 
still  dimly  see  the  face  of  our  teacher,  as 
with  merciless  severity  she  told  us  to  bound  Per- 
sia, mention  its  capital  city  and  its  most  impor- 

[105] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

tant  rivers  and  manufactures.  With  clouded 
brain  we  would  rise  to  our  feet  to  choke  out  in- 
coherently a  series  of  astounding  facts.  In  later 
years,  spurred  on  by  the  reading  of  some  his- 
tory and  biography,  we  have  spent  many  hours 
over  an  atlas.  We  have  consequently  gained 
some  knowledge  of  the  physical  make-up  of  the 
world  and  have  found  the  study  highly  enter- 
taining. It  is  a  passive  recreation,  but  it,  too, 
has  its  moments  of  triumph,  as  when  with  unerr- 
ing aim  we  show  a  confused  neighbor  the  spot 
on  the  map  where  Salonica  stands.  To  those  ad- 
venturous spirits,  who  in  the  flesh  are  perhaps 
unable  to  answer  to  the  Wanderlust,  we  offer 
the  consolation  of  imaginary  journeys  to  the 
ends  of  the  world,  seated  on  the  magic  carpet  of 
modern  times,  the  atlas. 


POETRY  THEY  COULDN'T  WRITE— AND  DID 

DO  you  consider  yourself  pretty  keen  at 
identifying  the  authorship  of  famous 
poetry?  .  .  .  We  thought  as  much:  everybody 
does.    Very  well,  then,  who  wrote  these  lines? 

Life  is  ever  Lord  of  Death, 

And  Love  can  never  lose  its  own! 

You  have  three  guesses.  .  .  .  "Tennyson?" 
No;  though  "In  Memoriam"  is  what  every  one 

[106] 


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guesses  first.  .  .  .  "Swinburne?"  Wrong 
again.  .  .  .  What,  you  give  it  up?  Oh,  very 
well,  Whittier  wrote  it  in  "Snow-Bound."  And 
now  be  cautious  about  placing  this : 

'Tis  sweet  to  hear  the  watchdog's  honest  bark 
Bay  deep-mouthed  welcome  as  we  draw  near  home. 

We  can  almost  hear  your  guesses  ranging  from 
Shakespeare  to  our  hearthstone  New  England 
poets,  with  many  choices  falling  on  Goldsmith 
and  Burns  (in  his  English  manner).  But  per- 
haps the  very  reason  why  Byron  was  stirred  to 
write  such  moving  lines  was  because  he  so  sel- 
dom had  a  real  home  to  turn  to.  If  you're  still 
undaunted,  perhaps  you'd  like  to  take  a  guess  at 
the  author  of: 

The  good  old  rule 
Sufficeth  them,  the  simple  plan, 
That  they  should  take  who  have  the  power 
And  they  should  keep  who  can. 

If  you  don't  know  this,  you  wouldn't  guess  it 
in  a  month  o'  Sundays,  so  we'll  give  you  a  clue  in 
the  shape  of  other  lines  from  the  same  poet : 

The  good  die  first, 
And  they  whose  hearts  are  dry  as  summer  dust 
Burn  to  the  socket. 

[107] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

While  you  have  been  misquoting  this  year 
after  year,  haven't  you  had  a  vague  idea  it  was 
from  Shakespeare?  We  had.  And  yet  this 
and  the  one  before  were  both  written  by  Words- 
worth. All  of  which  goes  to  indicate  that  one 
of  the  ways  poets  are  like  women  is  in  their 
achievement  of  infinite  variety. 


LITTLE   WOMEN 

DISTANT  blue  of  the  New  England  hills, 
sparkling  white  of  the  New  England  fields, 
and,  within,  flowers  and  much-read  books, 
work  done  with  laughter,  love  with  sincerity, 
and  hymns  sung  by  firelight — that  is  "Little 
Women."  Many  have  been  the  eulogies  and 
monuments  to  those  sturdy  old  New  England 
exponents  of  high  thinking;  this  simple  book  is 
an  eternal  tribute  to  the  charm  of  its  plain  liv- 
ing. From  Ohio  to  California  and  in  the  cities 
of  the  East  live  children  of  the  Puritans,  and  in 
every  home  there  is  some  common  touch.  Some- 
times it  is  a  bust  of  Plato  and  a  tradition  that 
learning  is  more  to  be  desired  than  riches.  Some- 
times it  is  a  lullaby  and  a  chintz-covered  chair  by 
the  fire,  sometimes  only  a  trick  of  speech  or  a 
simple  family  custom,  but  always  it  is  the  one 
thing  that  most  surely  touches  the  chord  of  re- 

[108] 


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membrance  and  gives  to  the  wanderer  the  thought 
of  home.  That  is  why  "Little  Women"  makes 
grown  people  smile  and  men  cry  as  they  see  it 
acted  out  upon  the  stage.  That  is  why  the  play  is 
a  source  of  real  joy,  even  as  the  book  has  been  so 
many  years.  To  move  great  men  to  great  deeds, 
to  give  knowledge  to  the  wise,  to  give  spiritual 
exaltation  to  the  saint,  are  good  and  beautiful 
things,  but  to  bring  happiness  to  the  hearts  of 
uncounted  numbers  of  eager  little  children  is  not 
to  be  despised. 

How  many  rollicking  families  have  acted 
"Little  Women"?  How  many  lonely  little  girls 
have  there  discovered  playmates?  How  many 
aspiring  and  dreaming  young  souls  have  found 
in  Laurie  their  first  lover  and  in  Jo  their  first 
friend  ?  It  will  be  long  before  this  book  dies  out 
of  the  national  life,  long  before  that  touch  of  the 
New  England  home  fails  to  strike  a  deep  re- 
sponsive chord,  long  before  the  succeeding  gen- 
erations of  awakening  girlhood  cease  to  rise  up 
and  call  it  blessed. 


THE   POET 

IT  is  his  part  to  tell  of  the  excellence  of  the 
creation,  the  wistfulness  of  life  that  struggles 
to  be  free.  He  knows  that  we  cannot  perish  as 
the  grasses  wither  and  as  the  fairness  of  spring 

[109] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

is  scorched.  For  in  us  is  a  little  of  that  which 
moves  through  the  seasons  and  the  ongoing  of 
the  systems.  Over  the  grasses  it  hovers  as  a 
breath.  They  are  breathed  on  and  are  glad,  but 
they  do  not  possess  what  man  possesses  of  the 
creative  spirit.  And  the  poet  tells  us  so  by 
every  song  he  sings.  Before  his  eye,  as  he  gazes 
at  the  outer  world,  ever  and  again  the  painted 
curtain  is  rolled  up  like  a  scroll.  Dim  eyed  and 
amazed,  he  peers  into  vastness.  Under  his  pos- 
session she  trembles  as  in  first  love.  With  pain 
and  halting,  the  vision  is  unfolded  into  the  words 
of  his  song.  As  one  who  would  cherish  fire  in  a 
wind-swept  place,  so  his  small  heart  of  flame 
and  sweetness  is  buffeted  and  stricken. 


THE    CRITICS 

CRITICS  will  show  you  how  such  and  such 
a  writer  repeated  the  thoughts  of  Kant  or 
Hegel,  or  used  the  phrasings  of  Dante  or  Mil- 
ton, or  stole  the  plots  of  Boccaccio  or  Guy  de 
Maupassant.  They  often  prove  their  wide 
reading,  they  sometimes  demonstrate  their  sa- 
gacity, but  they  do  not  justify  their  existence  as 
critics  unless  they  go  further  than  this,  for  the 
genius  of  authorship  declares  itself  less  unmis- 
takably in  gifts  shared  with  forerunners  or  con- 
temporaries   than   in   gifts   peculiar   to   itself. 

[110] 


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Walt  Whitman  or  William  Wordsworth  is 
neither  understood  nor  elucidated  when  his  pos- 
sible pilferings  have  been  listed;  at  best  the 
ground  has  only  been  cleared  for  the  critic's  real 
work  of  insight  and  interpretation. 


ON    SEEING   POETRY 

MANY  there  are  who  love  the  poetry  of 
words  and  lines  and  stanzas  as  they  have 
been  set  upon  paper  by  the  poets  of  all  time.  For 
them  the  mere  procession  of  syllables  can  sum- 
mon up  magic  music,  visions  of  beauty,  the  zest  of 
living,  kindling  emotions,  and  lofty  aspirations 
which  crystallize  into  deeds.  The  lovers  of  writ- 
ten poetry  are  indeed  thrice  blessed.  But  what 
of  the  rest  of  the  world — those  who  with  perfect 
frankness  admit  that  poetry  does  not  move  them? 
Must  such  resign  themselves  to  life  without  that 
rich  reward?  No;  for  there  is  the  poetry  of  life 
itself,  more  potent  than  anything  in  books  can 
be.  Nor  need  one  search  for  it.  The  sunlight 
of  a  dawn  slanting  through  your  window;  the 
twittering  of  birds  in  the  tree  top;  the  dande- 
lions in  the  grass ;  children  romping  in  the  park ; 
the  wistfulness  in  the  eyes  of  your  own  little  boy 
and  girl;  the  sight  of  two  lovers  at  a  trysting 
place ;  the  quiet  happiness  and  understanding  of 
the  old  couple  at  their  golden  wedding;  the  friend 

[in] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

whom  you  salute  at  the  street  corner;  fellow 
workers  content  in  their  daily  routine;  the  soar- 
ing lines  of  the  skyscraper  or  the  lonely  syca- 
more; the  ceaseless  pulsing  of  the  city  street  or 
the  hush  and  winter  calmness  of  a  country  hill- 
side; the  farmer  among  his  stock  or  the  sailor 
in  the  rigging;  the  cry  of  the  wind  and  the  swirl 
of  snowflakes ;  the  calm  fireside  at  home  and  the 
rustle  and  leap  of  its  flames ;  night  and  the  eter- 
nal stars — these  make  the  poetry  of  lif  e,  given  to 
all,  and  transcending  all  else. 


[112] 


VII 
TARIFF   TALK 


THE   FOUNDATION    STONE 

THE  most  beautiful  railroad  station  in 
America  is  in  Washington;  even  in  that 
city  of  splendid  buildings,  its  lovely  beauty 
is  unique  and  impressive.  Carved  in  its  marble 
facades  are  several  inscriptions  which  were  writ- 
ten by  ex-President  Eliot  of  Harvard,  or  chosen 
by  him  because  of  their  appropriateness  to  that 
particular  building  in  that  particular  city.  One 
of  them  reads : 


THE   FARM 

BEST    HOME    OF    THE    FAMILY 

MAIN    SOURCE    OF    NATIONAL    WEALTH 

FOUNDATION    OF    CIVILIZED    SOCIETY 

THE    NATURAL    PROVIDENCE 


Every  Congressman,  every  lawmaker,  every 
administrator  of  laws  who  comes  to  Washing- 
ton must  pass  beneath  the  marble  arch  which 

[113] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

bears  that  inscription.  At  least  once,  in  the  fresh- 
ness of  novelty,  he  must  be  impressed  by  it; 
thereafter  it  becomes  an  old  story,  and  he  hurries 
past,  unseeing.  The  inscription  expresses  a 
truth  that  is  fundamental  in  human  society. 
But  for  more  than  a  generation,  with  one  brief 
and  abortive  interruption,  the  Government  at 
Washington  has  been  in  the  hands  of  a  party 
whose  philosophy  ignores  this  truth.  The  pro- 
tective tariff  drains  the  farm  and  enriches  the 
town,  destroys  the  home  and  fills  the  factory,  pro- 
motes the  concentration  of  wealth  instead  of  its 
diffusion.  Under  the  Republican  party  this 
process  has  been  pushed  to  a  point  that  endangers 
our  civilization ;  the  reversal  that  began  at  Wash- 
ington with  the  inauguration  of  Woodeow  Wil- 
son comes  barely  in  time.  Socially,  economi- 
cally, and  politically,  the  country  is  ripe  and 
overripe  for  change.  At  this  particular  period 
in  this  nation's  existence,  if  any  statesman  will 
base  his  course  on  the  social  philosophy  contained 
in  Dr.  Eliot's  words,  the  very  stars  in  their 
courses  will  care  for  his  destiny. 


WHAT   "PROTECTION"   MEANS 

LITTLE  FALLS  is  a  town  of  twelve  thou- 
sand in  the  middle  of  New  York  State,  at 
a  lovely  spot  on  the  Mohawk  River.     Lately 

[114] 


TARIFF    TALK 


there  was  a  strike  there.  (Because  wages  in 
the  mills  had  been  reduced  from  $6  a  week  to 
$5.40,  and  from  $7.50  to  $6.75.)  When  the 
stories  of  rioting,  violence,  and  slums  came  out 
of  the  little  city,  an  editorial  in  a  New  York  pa- 
per, evidently  written  by  one  who  had  known 
the  town  in  his  youth,  remarked  in  mild  sur- 
prise: 

Disheartening  in  the  extreme  is  the  description  given  of 
Little  Falls  as  a  community.  Middle-aged  New  Yorkers 
remember  it  as  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  Mohawk  Val- 
ley villages.  Now  we  read  of  slums  more  foul  than  any 
in  New  York  City  or  Philadelphia;  of  houses  built  over  a 
brook  that  has  become  an  open  sewer;  of  filth,  poverty, 
and  overcrowding. 

Now  what  was  the  cause?  And  just  what  had 
happened?  Another  newspaper,  describing  the 
strike  and  the  town  as  it  is  to-day,  tells  exactly 
what  happened: 

The  city  is  a  mill  and  manufacturing  town.  The  owners 
are  men  who  saw  these  mills  and  factories  grow  up.  Titus 
Sheard  came  to  town  barefooted  and  built  up  a  big  busi- 
ness. .  .  .  Robert  MacKinnon  started  in  a  little  shed,  and 
after  a  time  had  more  than  two  thousand  employees.  .  .  . 

There,  in  epitome,  is  what  the  high  protective 
tariff  has  done  for  America.  Two  men,  per- 
haps five,  or  a  hundred,  depending  on  the  size 
of  the  town,  have  been  made  rich ;  two  thousand 

[115] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

others,  or  ten  or  a  hundred  thousand,  have  be- 
come laborers  and  gone  steadily  downward  in 
the  social  scale.  The  picture  of  a  factory  village 
is  everywhere  the  same — one  big  mansion  on  top 
of  the  hill,  a  thousand  mean  little  cottages  in  the 
valley.  High  protection  has  tended  to  divide  all 
America  into  a  small  caste  of  baronial  factory 
owners  at  the  top,  and  a  large  mass  of  feudal 
laborers  at  the  bottom.  But  let  us  keep  to  the 
specific  case  of  Little  Falls: 

About  five  years  ago  there  was  a  strike  in  the  MacKinnon 
mill.  Till  that  time  practically  all  the  local  employees 
were  Americans  or  like  Americans — Irish,  English,  Ger- 
man. .  .  .  The  strike  was  broken  by  the  importation  of 
several  hundred  "foreigners."  ...  It  is  some  of  these 
foreigners  who  are  striking  now.  The  foreigners  changed 
the  character  of  the  city  in  many  respects.  They  doubled 
the  police  court  business.  .  .  .  The  foreigners  took  pos- 
session, and  the  odor  of  garlic  succeeded  that  of  flowers 
and  the  milder  vegetables — where  there  had  been  cleanli- 
ness and  pride  in  neatness,  there  came  the  slovenly  filth  of 
overcrowding  and  poverty  economizing.  The  newcomers, 
"the  foreigners"  of  to-day,  crowded  everyone  else  out.  .  .  . 

There  again  is  the  typical  evolution  of  the 
American  town ;  first,  soon  after  high  protection 
was  adopted,  the  factory  owners  searched  the 
farms  for  native  American  girls  and  young  men ; 
then  came  a  period — every  middle-aged  Ameri- 
can can  remember  it — when  the  factories  were 
filled  with  German  and  Irish  girls  and  youths, 

[116] 


TARIFF    TALK 


the  first  American-born  generation  of  those  races. 
To-day  walk  through  a  typical  factory  and  you 
will  scarcely  see  an  Irish  or  German  face;  the 
factory  owners  are  now  using  up  the  children  of 
the  more  recent  immigrants — Italian,  Polish, 
Slavic,  Greek.  (And  if  the  process  were  to  go 
on,  if  the  Republican  party,  dominated  by  the 
factory  owning  element,  had  kept  its  grip  on  the 
country,  twenty  years  from  now  you  would  see 
the  factory  owners  filling  their  mills  with  Hin- 
dus, Japs,  and  other  Asiatics.) 

Now  ask  yourself  what  became  of  that  genera- 
tion of  American-born  factory  workers,  and  of 
the  Irish  and  Germans  who  followed  them. 
Think  through  to  the  answer  of  that  question  and 
you  will  realize  the  devastating  tragedy  that  the 
high  protective  tariff  has  brought  upon  America. 
They  were  a  wholesome  class,  the  American  girls 
who  worked  in  the  factories  in  the  fifties. 
Charles  Dickens,  on  his  American  trip,  found 
little  to  praise,  but  he  rose  to  real  enthusiasm 
over  the  mill  girls  of  Lowell.    He  found 

not  one  young  girl  whom  ...  I  would  have  removed  from 
those  works  if  I  had  the  power. 

He  spoke  of  "their  cleanliness  and  comfort," 
their  "joint-stock  pianos"  in  the  boarding  houses, 
the  circulating  libraries  that  they  organized  and 
managed.    "Finally,"  he  said  in  a  climax  of  en- 

[117] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

thusiasm  for  these  American  mill  girls  of  the 
fifties,  "they  have  got  up  among  themselves  a 
periodical,"  which  developed  at  least  one  poet  of 
some  distinction. 

What  became  of  these  native  Americans,  and 
the  Irish  and  Germans  who  followed  them?  It 
is  common  to  say  that  they  went  up  in  the  social 
scale  when  the  newer  immigrants  came  in.  Only 
to  a  negligible  degree  is  this  true.  For  the  most 
part,  they  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  They  disap- 
peared from  the  face  of  the  earth.  How  could  it 
be  otherwise?  The  young  women  were  kept 
working  in  the  mills  during  all  the  years  when 
they  might  have  been  bearing  and  raising  chil- 
dren ;  when  they  could  work  no  longer  they  were 
thrown  on  the  scrap  heap,  and  that  was  the  end 
of  them  and  their  kind.  Moreover,  the  native 
American  had  a  higher  standard  of  living,  which 
the  first  generation  of  immigrant-born  acquired 
in  their  turn.  Then  the  factory  owners  brought 
in  another  kind  of  immigrant,  with  a  lower  stand- 
ard of  living,  against  whom  the  others  could  not 
compete.  In  this  situation  lies  the  cause  of  one 
of  the  most  deplorable  economic  phenomena  in 
American  life.  The  statesman  who  works  out 
the  relation  between  high  protection  and  race 
suicide  will  have  gone  far  toward  getting  his 
bearings  right. 

The  harm  lay  not  in  the  fact  that  protection 
stimulated  immigration;  we  needed  the  immi- 

[118] 


TARIFF    TALK 


grants,  and  need  them  yet.  But  there  was  harm 
in  our  letting  the  factory  owner  use  the  immi- 
grant to  lower  the  wages  and  standard  of  living 
of  those  already  here;  there  was  harm  in  letting 
the  factory  owner  use  up  and  throw  on  the  scrap 
heap  the  native  Americans  and  the  first  Ameri- 
can generation  of  Irish,  Scotch,  English,  and 
German  born.  Moreover,  there  has  been  untold 
harm  in  the  way  we  have  used  our  immigrants, 
dumping  them  into  factory  slums  instead  of 
taking  them  on  the  land,  using  them  up  as  if 
they  were  the  soulless  raw  material  of  manufac- 
ture. 

Let  us  be  intellectually  honest  about  the  tariff . 
It  is  not  necessary  to  advocate  the  immediate  wip- 
ing out  of  all  protection.  If  war  had  not  inter- 
vened, to  inflame  passion,  the  abolition  of  slavery 
would  have  been  done  gradually,  with  care  to 
alleviate  the  economic  readjustments  of  its  pass- 
ing. 

But  there  never  was  much  doubt  about  the 
moral  aspect  of  slavery. 


TWENTY   YEARS    FROM    NOW 

SOMEWHERE  just  emerging  from  college, 
or  starting  to  practice  law  in  a  country  town, 
are  those  young  men  who,  twenty  years  from 
now,  will  succeed  Roosevelt,  Bbyan,  Wilson, 

[H9] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

La  Follette,  as  the  moral  and  political  leaders 
of  their  generation.  What  will  their  issues  be? 
The  questions  that  agitate  us  now  will  have  been 
settled.  We  think  that  one  of  these  leaders  will 
be  a  man  who  recognizes  that  alcohol  is  a  poison 
and  that  prostitution  in  this  country  is  quite 
largely  a  commercialized  incident  of  the  liquor 
business.  Another  will  be  a  man  who  sees  that 
taking  money  out  of  one  man's  pocket  and  put- 
ting it  in  another's  is  immoral,  and  that  the  char- 
acter of  the  act  is  not  changed  by  calling  it  a 
"protective"  tariff. 


[120] 


VIII 
OUR   TOWN 


THE    OLYMPIAN 

PENT  within  the  particular  cell  of  the  apart- 
ment honeycomb  in  which  it  pleases  us  to 
say  we  live,  with  the  lady  in  the  flat  over- 
head practicing  scales,  the  cook  in  the  flat  below 
brewing  (how  unmistakably!)  an  onion  stew,  and 
the  janitor  and  elevator  boy  fighting  in  the  air 
shaft — held  in  these  chains  of  circumstance,  the 
advertising  pamphlet  of  a  dictagraph  company 
invites  the  dazzled  eye.  "Often,"  we  read,  "the 
sitting  room,  the  sewing  room,  or  the  parlor  is 
too  far  removed  from  the  nursery  to  enable  you 
to  step  easily  into  the  nursery.  If  you  are  talk- 
ing to  a  friend  or  a  stranger  in  any  room  in  the 
house,  and  wish  to  know  how  the  children  are 
getting  along  in  the  nursery,  you  do  not  have  to 
leave  the  room  to  find  out.  You  use  the  dicta- 
graph." 

But  overcoming  the  difficulty  of  reaching 
the  distant  nursery — a  very  real  one — is  only 
one  of  the  boons  conferred  by.  the  dictagraph. 
There  is  the  problem  of  servants,  for  instance 

[121] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

("Euphemia,  please  shut  the  kitchen  door  until 
you  have  finished  breaking  plates"),  with  which 
all  are  familiar.  "Domestic  science  two  or  three 
years  ago  was  a  practically  untouched  field.  The 
master  of  the  house  depended  upon  a  retinue  (ah, 
yes!)  of  willing,  if  untutored,  servants  to  serve 
him  and  his  guests  in  a  bungling,  obtrusive  way." 
This  distressing  situation  vanishes  before  the  dic- 
tagraph as  mists  dissolve  before  the  sun.  The  re- 
tinue remains,  of  course,  but  the  bungling  dis- 
appears— the  master  but  breathes  the  word,  the 
dictagraph  carries  it  through  the  intricate,  in- 
visible ganglia  of  his  establishment. 

Exercise  is  another  problem  difficult  to  solve 
in  our  town.  We  often  think  we  should  like  to 
begin  the  day  with  a  ride  in  the  park,  but  horses 
— however,  let  us  not  sink  to  details  too  prosaic. 
With  the  dictagraph,  "communication  with  the 
stable  is  assured.  For  instance,  you  decide  to  go 
for  an  early  morning  ride  without  having  pre- 
viously instructed  the  stableman  at  what  hour 
you  want  the  horse.  Perhaps  you  have  been 
restless,  wake  early,  and  decide  to  ride  before 
breakfast.  In  either  instance  the  dictagraph 
stationed  at  your  elbow  saves  all  bother.  With- 
out getting  out  of  bed,  you  touch  the  key  of  the 
dictagraph.  The  gong  in  the  stable  arouses  the 
stableman.  The  horse  is  saddled  while  you  are 
dressing.  When  you  go  down  at  six  the  favorite 
horse  is  at  the  door." 

[122] 


OUR     TOWN 


We  see  him  there  now,  hear  the  merry  peal 
of  the  stable  gong  as  Jorrocks  rolls  out  of  bed 
and  begins  to  groom  (with  that  delightfully 
soothing  "Sss — sss — sss"  of  his)  the  Irish  hunter. 
We  see  ourselves  drowsily  becoming  aware  of  the 
new  day,  while  James,  having  laid  our  robe  and 
slippers  and  tempered  the  water  carefully, 
sprinkles  a  few  spoonfuls  of  rose  salts  in  the  bath. 
In  fact,  we  might  continue  indefinitely,  but  it's 
already  8.37,  eggs  and  coffee  are  swallowed,  and 
if  we  don't  beat  it  for  the  Subway  and  catch  that 
downtown  express  we  can  never  get  into  the  of- 
fice by  nine  o'clock. 


HOLMES    IN    BLUE 

THE  fundamental  function  of  a  police  force 
is  to  prevent  crimes  and  catch  criminals. 
Certain  minor  and  incidental  functions,  as  well 
as  various  incidental  faults  of  individual  police- 
men, are  often  so  magnified  and  dwelt  upon  that 
this  single  basic  duty  is  lost  sight  of.  Judged  by 
its  efficiency  along  this  single  line,  the  New  York 
police  force  is  one  of  the  most  successful  institu- 
tions in  the  world.  Every  once  in  a  while  one 
observes  examples  of  its  effectiveness  which  seem 
almost  incredible  and  impress  one  anew  with  the 
strangeness  of  truth  compared  with  the  fiction 
of  even  Sir  Conan  Doyle. 

[128] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

The  other  night,  a  little  German  saloon  in 
The  Bronx,  called  "Zur  Ewigen  Lampe"  (The 
Ever-Lighted  Lamp),  where  the  proprietor, 
the  bartender,  and  a  few  friends  were  quietly 
playing  pinocle,  was  raided  by  a  gang  of  armed 
toughs  who  shot,  probably  fatally,  the  bartender 
and  a  patron.  As  soon  as  the  excitement  was 
over,  someone  telephoned  to  the  police  station. 
"All  right,"  said  the  sergeant  at  the  station, 
"we've  got  the  man  here."  A  policeman  off 
duty,  several  miles  from  his  beat,  returning  from 
a  visit  to  friends  in  Brooklyn,  had  seen  the  mur- 
derer board  a  car,  and  with  no  more  to  guide 
him  than  some  sort  of  intuition  which  told 
him  that  that  man  had  recently  been  engaged 
in  crime,  arrested  the  murderer,  took  him  to  the 
station,  and  waited  for  the  telephone  to  bring 
some  message  as  to  what  the  crime  was  and 
where  it  was  committed. 

Incidents  like  this  do  not  figure  in  the  news- 
papers as  do  stories  of  police  corruption.  The 
prisoner  who  escapes  is  more  unusual  than  the 
one  who  is  caught,  and  consequently  gets  more 
public  attention.  The  police,  like  most  other 
people,  suffer  from  the  fact  that  simple  devotion 
to  commonplace  duty  does  not  make  good  head- 
lines. 


[184] 


OUR     TOWN 


PROFITS    AND   DECENCY 

SOME  five  years  ago  the  late  "Big  Tim"  Sul- 
livan was  quoted  as  saying  that  the  well- 
known  song,  "They  Say  Such  Things  and  They 
Do  Such  Things  on  the  Bowery,"  had  lowered 
rents  and  real  estate  values  on  that  famous  thor- 
oughfare by  fully  25  to  30  per  cent.  The  allu- 
sions stuck,  and  people  would  not  go  there.  A 
few  weeks  ago  the  receivers  of  the  Hotel  Rector 
in  New  York  changed  its  name  to  Claridge's. 
No  one  who  remembered  the  references  to  "Rec- 
tor's" in  such  plays  as  "The  Easiest  Way,"  or 
who  has  savored  the  fleshly  atmosphere  of  that 
popular  musical  comedy  "The  Girl  from  Rec- 
tor's," is  at  any  loss  to  understand  why  this 
change  was  made.  What  would  the  respectable 
people  of  Alton,  111.,  for  example,  say  to  a  man 
who  had  been  in  New  York  and  had  stayed  at 
"Rector's"?  It  would  be  a  confession  of  moral 
bankruptcy!  With  their  usual  delicate  indirec- 
tion, our  papers  say  that  the  name  was  "redolent 
of  champagne  and  lobster."  Certainly  the  Hotel 
Rector  failed  to  make  money  despite  every  ad- 
vantage of  location,  structure,  and  management. 
And  now  comes  word  that  San  Francisco  has 
wiped  out  the  world-famous  "Barbary  Coast"  on 
the  ground  that  "it  would  hurt  the  Panama-Pa- 
cific Exposition."     The  Coast  has  been  closed 

[125] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

before — but  always  its  influence  has  been  too 
strong  for  honest  officials  and  its  spoils  for  dis- 
honest ones.  The  Coast's  power  was  that  of  the 
united  dive  keepers  and  their  gangs  of  repeaters 
and  habitues,  first  of  all;  then  the  men  who 
profited  by  it,  landlords  and  merchants;  finally, 
the  tolerance  of  sightseers,  who  considered  the 
Coast  their  playground.  So  great  was  this  in- 
fluence that  at  one  time,  when  the  Coast  was 
closed  during  a  period  of  reform,  the  leading 
merchants  of  the  city  petitioned  the  police  com- 
missioners to  reopen  it.  Only  one  newspaper  in 
San  Francisco,  the  "Bulletin,"  dared  to  publish 
the  names  of  the  leading  merchants  who  had 
signed  that  petition.  But  business  men  have 
learned  a  lesson  since  then.  They  know  to-day 
that  the  profit  in  the  waste  and  wreck  of  human 
life  is,  in  the  end,  illusory. 

No  community  can  get  anything  out  of  booze, 
gambling,  and  prostitution  save  impaired  values, 
falling  rents,  higher  police  expenses,  loss,  degra- 
dation, and  death. 

THE   PASSING   OF   THE    PALE 

FOR  hundreds  of  years  the  world  thought  it 
wise  to  handle  whatever  was  socially  un- 
desirable simply  by  building  a  wall  around  it. 
So  separate  ghettos,  pales,  quarantines,  or  other 
confines  were  set  for  Jews,  Christians,  lepers,  in- 

[126] 


OUR     TOWN 


sane,  or  what  not.  This  ancient  precedent  has 
become  imbedded  in  our  thought  on  social  prob- 
lems, and  every  so  often  someone  tells  us  that  the 
remedy  for  vice  is  segregation.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  idea  of  an  orderly,  well-regulated 
"quarter"  seems  much  more  solid  and  logical  than 
these  flighty  "moral  movements"  with  all  their 
raids  and  parades,  their  sudden  alternations  of 
license  and  cruelty.  But  neither  is  constructive. 
The  bald  fact  is  that  segregation  means  putting 
vice  on  a  business  basis  with  all  that  that  implies 
as  to  advertising  and  creating  "trade."  The  so- 
cial evil  is  to  be  made  part  of  our  community 
life — an  atrocious  contradiction  in  terms.  No 
one  proposes  to  "segregate"  typhoid  or  tubercu- 
losis, and  the  losses  from  venereal  diseases  are 
much  heavier.  We  are  going  to  do  away  with 
these  things  altogether.  This  seems  a  large  or- 
der, but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Orient 
is  still  complacent  over  dirt  diseases  which  we 
have  banished.  Dirt  is  comfortable  and  self-in- 
dulgent, a  part  of  "the  natural  order,"  but  we 
found  it  too  expensive.  The  constructive  work 
required  will  take  a  long  time,  but  it  will  be  done. 
The  goal  was  indicated  in  the  report  of  the  Chi- 
cago Vice  Commission  and  in  the  speech,  some 
years  before,  of  a  radical  Western  Congressman 
who  said  calmly:  "In  my  region  we  are  going 
to  raise  a  generation  of  clean-living,  God-fearing 
people,  and  we  are  going  to  do  it  without  the  aid 

[127] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEK8 

or  consent  of  any  brewery  or  brothel  on  earth." 
What  St.  Augustine  said  of  poverty  is  true 
of  the  social  evil:  what  we  really  need  is  to  get 
rid  of  it.  This  ideal  must  not  be  lost  sight 
of.  When  men  believe  that  a  decent  life  is 
not  possible  for  them,  then  it  is  impossible. 
When  they  believe  righteousness  to  be  within 
their  power,  then  it  is  possible.  If  the  history  of 
religion  does  not  prove  this,  it  proves  nothing. 
We  must  be  careful  and  practical  in  our  methods 
of  dealing  with  social  problems,  but  we  must  also 
be  idealistic  to  a  high  degree  in  the  ends  we  seek. 
Nothing  else  will  serve  the  life  of  our  time  or 
lay  the  needed  foundations  for  those  who  are 
to  come  after  us.  It  is  still  true  that  where 
there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish. 


THE    MINIMUM   WAGE 

THERE  is  no  gain,  there  is  loss,  in  trying 
to  simplify  what  is  not  simple.  And  the 
line  of  investigation  assumed  by  the  Illinois  Vice 
Commission,  if  correctly  reported  in  the  news- 
papers, is  an  over-simplification  of  a  troubled 
matter.  There  is  no  sharp  dramatic  wage  line 
below  which  girls  tend  to  become  prostitutes  and 
above  which  their  temptations  vanish.  In  cer- 
tain cities  four  out  of  five  girls  live  at  home. 
When  they  violate  social  standards  there  are 

[128] 


OUR     TOWN 


many  elements  responsible.  One  is  the  weaken- 
ing of  parental  control.  And  that  weakening  is 
due  to  the  partial  economic  independence  of  the 
daughter,  who  can  withhold  her  wages  from  the 
family  or  can  leave  home  if  a  large  measure  of 
freedom  is  denied  her.  It  is  not  the  fact  that 
her  wages  are  low  that  leads  to  that  weakening 
of  parental  control.  It  is  the  fact  that  she  earns 
wages.  Because  of  that  she  asserts  the  right  to 
some  of  the  same  social  freedom  which  has  always 
been  preempted  by  man.  Also,  women  in  in- 
dustry do  not  tend  to  become  prostitutes  to  any 
degree  that  permits  generalizations.  Their  in- 
telligence keeps  them  clear  of  a  way  of  life  which 
is  diseased,  unsuccessful,  and  full  of  suffering. 
The  ranks  of  prostitution  are  recruited  more  gen- 
erally from  the  mentally  defective,  the  untrained, 
and  the  ignorant.  But  it  is  an  unfair  burden 
on  the  home  to  take  the  daughter  away  from 
it  and  wear  out  her  young  strength  in  a  depart- 
ment store  and  pay  her  less  than  a  living  wage. 
Justice  demands  that  somewhere,  either  in  the 
home  or  out  of  it,  the  girl  be  permitted  to  earn 
a  living  wage,  to  pay  in  full  by  useful  work  for 
her  expense  to  the  family  of  which  she  is  a  mem- 
ber. It  is  unfair  that  the  department  store  should 
make  the  home  support  the  girl.  If  the  mini- 
mum wage  for  women  is  right,  it  is  right  not  be- 
cause the  lack  of  it  drives  women  to  prostitution, 
but  because  the  lack  of  it  weakens  the  home. 

[129] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


THE    THING   AS   IT   IS 

THERE  were  perhaps  twenty  men  about  the 
table,  each  a  stored  museum  of  little-known 
facts.  One  might  know  the  marriage  customs 
of  some  remote  tribe  of  Eskimos;  another 
might  be  absorbed  at  the  moment  in  the  ventral 
fin  of  a  variety  of  fish  found  in  Nicaragua.  On 
the  wall  was  a  map  of  the  world,  and  on  this 
map  were  stuck  various  little  flags.  One  was 
up  in  Ellesmere  Land,  within  the  Arctic  Circle ; 
one  in  the  South  Seas;  one  in  the  Amazon  head- 
waters, and  another  on  the  coast  of  Peru.  On 
each  of  these  flags  was  a  name,  and  these  names 
were  names  of  friends  and  associates  of  the  men 
about  the  table — men  who  were  burrowing  at  the 
moment  into  tropical  jungles  or  dragging  sledges 
over  the  ice.  If  a  letter  had  arrived  at  that  in- 
stant, stained  with  the  travel  of  months — by 
mule  back,  steamer,  native  courier,  goodness 
knows  what — some  one  would  have  gone  over  to 
the  map  and  moved  one  of  the  little  flags — per- 
haps half  an  inch.  "Smith  has  got  up  to  here," 
he  would  say.  One  of  the  flags  marked  a  spot 
on  the  upper  Orinoco,  where  a  mountain  rises 
straight  up  from  the  river  like  an  office  building 
from  a  city  street.  Nobody  knows  what  there 
may  be  on  its  wide,  flat  top,  for  no  one  has  been 
there — a  lost  nation  perhaps,  like  the  one  in  Co- 

[130] 


OUR     TOWN 


nan  Doyle's  story.  "Humboldt  says  it  can't 
be  climbed,"  observed  one  of  the  men  at  the  table. 

"Well,  we'll  see.     X ought  to  find  out." 

That  was  what  X was  there  for — to  find 

out.  That  was  the  work,  almost  the  religion,  of 
all  these  men  about  the  table — to  find  out,  to 
see  the  thing  "as  it  is."  Four  or  five  of 
them  were  leaving  the  next  day  to  rake  a 
remote  tropical  jungle  with  a  fine-tooth  comb 
and  classify  its  birds.  To  come  back  with  three 
new  kinds  might  excite  them  as  much  as  it  would 
excite  the  waiter  serving  them  to  find  three 
gold  mines.  Outside,  the  city  thundered — money 
hunters,  steam  riveters,  chorus  girls,  trolley-car 
motormen,  perfumed  ladies  and  poodle  dogs  in 
carriages — as  indifferent  to  them  as  they,  a 
handful  of  scientific  persons  from  the  American 
Museum  of  Natural  History,  were  to  it.  Cir- 
cles within  circles  innumerable  make  up  that 
strange  thing  called  a  city. 


THE    CASE    OF   BECKER 

THE  New  York  policeman  is  blood-brother 
of  the  New  York  fireman.  They  are  not 
only  the  same  breed,  they  are  the  same  family. 
And  did  you  ever  try  to  tip  a  New  York  fireman? 
Did  you  ever  hear  of  one  stealing  anything  from 
a  burning  house?     Can  you  imagine  a  fireman 

[131] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

conspiring  with  an  incendiary  to  profit  by  arson? 
A  Lieutenant  Becker  is  inconceivable  in  the  twin 
department  of  public  safety  on  Manhattan 
Island.  Simply  inconceivable.  Yet  the  two 
bodies  of  men — alike  in  courage  but  so  unlike 
in  public  esteem — are  the  same  seed  fallen  upon 
two  different  soils.  That  is  what  makes  the  sit- 
uation so  hopeful  for  reform.  You  are  con- 
stantly assured  that  you  cannot  change  human 
nature;  that  you  cannot  make  people  over  by 
process  of  law.  But  if  you  cannot  reform  men 
by  reforming  the  conditions  that  make  men  what 
they  are,  how  is  it  that  you  can  so  easily  de- 
bauch and  degrade  them  by  reversing  the  proc- 
ess? 

• 

PASSOVER 

IF,  man-in-the-moon-like,  you  could  glance  into 
the  windows  of  these  humble  Ghetto  homes, 
when  the  eve  of  the  fourteenth  day  of  Nisan 
has  arrived,  your  heart  would  rejoice  with  the 
heart  of  the  Chosen  People.  The  Seder  dishes 
have  been  put  away;  the  cups  and  saucers  from 
the  shelves  gaze  down  upon  you  with  a  sancti- 
fied expression.  The  copper  matzoh  set,  the  an- 
cestral samovar,  and  the  two-handled  cup  for 
the  hand  washing  glow  from  energetic  burnish- 
ing. The  house  is  spotless.  The  crumb  of 
leaven  left  by  the  good  housewife  to  test  the 

[132] 


OUR     TOWN 


sharpness  of  her  husband's  eyes  has  been  dis- 
covered in  the  search  by  candlelight,  and  has 
been  pronounced  "void  and  as  dust."  And  now 
the  father  in  his  snow-white  kittel,  not  sitting  but 
"reclining  like  a  king,"  presides  over  the  Feast 
of  the  Passover.  The  horseradish  and  bitter 
herbs,  in  commemoration  of  the  days  of  bondage 
in  Egypt;  the  shank  bone  of  the  Paschal  lamb, 
and  the  matzoh  cake,  symbolic  of  the  flight  from 
Egypt,  are  partaken  of,  and  little  "Katzen," 
bright-eyed,  has  found  the  hidden  matzoh  flake 
and  clamors  eagerly  for  a  gift. 

An  Old- World  picture  this,  but  an  encour- 
aging one.  For  the  future  of  the  Jew  in  Amer- 
ica is  bound  up  with  the  traditions  of  the  past. 


BREAKING    IN 

ONE  hears  a  great  deal  about  successful 
people  "breaking  into"  a  certain  town  or 
line  of  business.  Wise  articles  are  written  on 
the  difficulties  attending  the  process,  and  it  is 
given  the  aspect  of  an  achievement  of  individual 
heroism;  something,  as  if  some  modern  Amadis 
de  Gaul  had  stormed  a  city  single-handed.  Yet 
when  we  look  at  the  facts  of  business  life,  one 
of  the  most  pressing  problems  is  that  of  finding 
and  keeping  people  who  can  be  promoted;  one 
of  the  severest  tests  of  an  executive  is  whether 

[133] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

he  has  any  one  fit  to  succeed  him.  And  the  rea- 
son is  as  clear  as  the  fact.  The  only  hope  of 
permanent  success  for  even  the  most  gigantic 
of  our  modern  corporations  is  to  get  into  their 
own  ranks  the  leaders  of  to-morrow,  those  who 
can  think  most  rapidly  and  see  most  clearly.  The 
hunt  for  talent  never  ceases — where  is  the  person 
who  can  and  will  put  aside  all  distractions  and 
study  these  problems  through  to  a  solution?  Who 
will  do  this  work,  make  this  thing  go?  The 
modern  world  will  pay  almost  any  price  for 
those  who  will  do  the  worrying  successfully.  All 
our  tremendous  apparatus  of  companies,  machin- 
ery, etc.,  makes  the  need  for  such  people  but 
the  more  imperative — they  are  drawn  in  by  a 
current  as  strong  as  Niagara.  The  "breaking  in" 
really  consists  in  their  forcing  their  abilities  into 
fuller  being,  into  dominance  over  their  own  care- 
lessness and  inertia.  The  self -absorption  of  com- 
mercial life  makes  it  seem  terribly  aloof  and  im- 
penetrable, but  it  is  still  true  that  a  man  diligent 
in  his  business  shall  stand  before  kings — in  fact, 
a  long  way  before  them. 


THE    SLAG    SPOT 

WHEN  Mr.  Dooley  came  to  this  country, 
with  his  gift  of  the  gab — his  geniality  and 
sociability  and  humorous  charm — was  it  the  fault 

[1*4] 


OUR    TOWN 


of  that  inimitable  philosopher  himself  that  we 
had  no  place  for  him  but  behind  the  saloon  bar? 
Who  is  to  blame  for  the  fact  that  the  Irish  genius 
for  social  cooperation  has  found  among  us  its 
most  notable  manifestation  in  the  solidarity  of 
Tammany  Hall?  We  import  the  music-loving 
Italians  by  the  hundred  thousand,  and  get  the 
benefit  of  their  gift  of  harmony  only  in  the  caco- 
phonies of  the  street  pianos.  The  one  public 
library  in  the  United  States  that  circulates  fewer 
books  of  fiction  than  of  history  and  science  and 
philosophy  is  situated  among  the  Russian  Jews 
on  New  York's  East  Side ;  and  the  Russian  Jew 
has  an  ideal  of  citizenship  as  eager  as  his  thirst 
for  learning.  Who  is  putting  the  red  flag  into 
his  hands  ?  We  are  hearing  much  about  the  harm 
that  the  foreign  immigrant  is  doing  to  us  as  a 
nation.  Does  he  do  us  harm  only?  And  if  he 
did,  whose  fault  would  it  be? 

It  is  the  commonest  charge  of  our  foreign 
critics  that  our  national  life  is  unbeautiful,  un- 
social, too  barbarously  competitive,  and  crudely 
neglectful  of  the  ameliorating  graces  of  art.  We 
are  adding  every  year  to  our  materialistic  civili- 
zation a  huge  heaven  of  Italians,  Russians,  Hun- 
garians, Poles,  Roumanians,  and  all  strains  of 
the  blood  of  art-loving  and  idealistic  races  with 
a  genius  for  social  life.  We  are  receiving  them, 
as  we  received  the  negro,  into  industrial  slavery. 
We  are  crowding  them  into  tenements  where  any 

[135] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

decent  living  is  well-nigh  impossible.  We  are 
putting  them  where  we  can  get  no  good  of  them 
and  they  can  get  only  evil  of  us.  And  we  are 
complaining  bitterly  about  it.  We  are  like  the 
Russian  nobleman  who  housed  tenants  in  his  cel- 
lar and  in  consequence  got  smallpox  in  his  fam- 
ily. If  the  foreign  immigrant  is  a  menace  to  us, 
it  is  because  we  are  making  him  so.  We  are  ex- 
ploiting his  necessity,  industrially,  and  suffering 
for  the  sins  of  oppression.  That  is  as  it  should 
be.    If  we  did  not  suffer,  we  should  never  learn. 


IN    THE    RAILWAY    STATION 

WE  used  to  call  the  railway  station  a  "dee- 
po,"  but  that  was  in  the  early  Pullman 
period  of  our  national  art.  To-day  the  Ameri- 
can station  shares  something  of  the  continental 
traveler's  admiration  for  the  American  hotel. 
The  massive  grandeur  of  the  Pennsylvania  ter- 
minal in  New  York  is  more  impressive  than 
most  of  the  city's  libraries  or  churches  or  sky- 
scrapers. The  great  train  shed  itself — an  Ama- 
zonian forest  of  steel — is  as  impressive  as  the 
outer  shell.  Here  is  matter  for  both  painter  and 
poet.  Abroad,  Monet  has  painted  the  terminals 
of  Paris  and  of  London;  and  George  Freder- 
ick Watts,  with  what  Chesterton  calls  "a 

[136] 


OUR     TOWN 


splendid  and  truly  religious  imagination,"  once 
offered  to  decorate  Euston  for  an  unsympathetic 
board  of  managers.  The  poetry  of  the  railway 
has  been  hinted  at  in  prose  by  Emerson  and 
Henry  James,  and  in  verse  by  at  least  two  others 
— Verlaine  and  John  Davidson.  The  latter  is 
impressed  by 

the  delta  wide  of  platforms,  whence 
Discharges  into  London's  sea,  immense 
And  turbulent,  a  brimming  human  flood, 
A  river  inexhaustible  of  blood 
That  turns  the  wheels — 

and  again  describes 

London's  interwreathed 
And  labyrinthine  railways,  sheathed 
In  annual  increments  of  soot. 

But  we  want  some  poet  to  view  our  railway 
stations  more  cheerfully  than  poor  Davidson 
viewed  London  Bridge  and  Waterloo.  The 
merry  football  crowds;  the  hurrying  commuters 
with  their  children  and  their  parcels,  bringing 
a  touch  of  wholesome  family  life  into  the  jostling 
market  place ;  the  self-important  "drummer"  with 
his  attendant  porter,  charged  with  sample  cases; 
the  herd  of  newly  arrived  immigrants,  tagged 
and  ticketed  like  so  much  luggage  and  piloted 
by  a  mustached  padrone — here  are  types  various 

[137] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

enough  for  Walt  Whitman  himself  to  make 
poetry  of  in  the  mere  cataloguing. 


THE    ELEMENTS 

WE  have  chosen,  or  Fate  has  chosen  for  us, 
a  dwelling  place  where  grass  grows  only 
by  pushing  its  way  up  stubbornly  and  deviously 
between  bricks,  in  the  crevices  of  unmended  pave- 
ments, and  in  patches  of  park  or  tenement- 
framed  court.  The  sun  shines  on  us  and  the 
rain  falls;  but  factory  smoke  dims  the  sunshine, 
and  the  rain,  when  it  reaches  us,  is  stained  and 
dust-laden.  Our  feet  pound  hard  pavements; 
our  horizon  is  limited  by  lofts  and  marred  by 
gas  tanks  and  department  stores.  We  are  herded 
with  other  men  and  women  in  our  comings  and 
goings  as  sheep  bound  for  the  shambles,  and  in 
the  squirrel-cage  apartment  houses  and  offices 
where  we  spend  days  and  nights.  We  jostle 
people  on  the  street  whose  look  repels  us,  whose 
bodily  contacts  we  resent,  and  other  folk  with 
whom  we  could  enter  into  real  sympathy  did 
opportunity  but  offer.  We  see  both  too  much 
and  too  little  of  human  nature  and  human  be- 
ings; we  are  at  once  too  subtle  and  too  stupid 
to  live  richly  among  sordid  surroundings.  But 
a  day  offers  a  release  from  all  this,  and  we  make 
the  day  an  adventure.    We  turn  our  steps  out 

[138] 


OUR     TOWN 


of  the  city  gates  and  renew  our  friendship  with 
the  elements.  We  lie  at  full  length  in  green 
grass;  we  grub  in  the  soil  or  let  sand  trickle 
through  half-spread  fingers.  We  revel  in  the 
shock  of  a  plunge  into  waters  that  cool  us  and 
sustain;  we  brace  our  legs  to  the  bucking  of 
the  boat  deck;  we  squat  beside  the  fire  we  have 
built  of  driftwood  on  rocks  lapped  by  tireless 
tides,  and  light  our  pipe  from  the  long  stick 
that,  ten  minutes  before,  toasted  our  savory  ba- 
con. The  good  these  expeditions  do  us  is  not 
physical  alone;  it  mends  the  spirit.  We  return 
in  harmony  with  life — and  life  includes  all  things 
material  and  immaterial;  objects  animate  and 
"inanimate";  agencies  human  and  agencies  di- 
vinely mysterious.  The  hum  of  bees  on  pilgrim- 
age, the  fiddling  of  a  cricket  choir,  the  wind- 
blown odor  of  an  unseen  honeysuckle,  attune  us 
to  the  World  Force  and  reconcile  us  to  living 
in  the  human  hive  we  call  a  city.  We  hear  in 
the  whir  of  dynamos  and  the  throbbing  of  mo- 
tors the  very  music  of  power  that  thrilled  us 
when  we  heard  those  other  voices  out  of  God's 
natural  kingdom.  Refreshed  and  reassured,  we 
return  to  doing  a  modest  share  of  the  great 
world's  work. 


[139] 


IX 
POLITICAL  PERSONALITIES 


THE   AFTERMATH 

THE  exigencies  of  circulating  over  a  con- 
tinent cause  this  paper  to  go  to  the  printer 
before  the  result  of  the  election  is  known. 
If  the  average  voter  could  share  the  momentary 
mood  of  speculation  which  this  fact  enforces  upon 
editors,  his  reflections  would  reassure  him.  Who- 
ever is  President  of  the  United  States  next  4th 
of  March,  there  is  hardly  an  American  but  will 
be  proud  of  the  sort  of  man  who  has  come  to 
the  top  of  this  Republic  at  the  beginning  of  its 
one  hundred  and  twenty-sixth  year.  Although 
some  millions  of  his  fellow  countrymen  will  have 
voted  disapproval  of  President  Taft,  probably 
not  one  hundred  of  them  all  would  translate  dis- 
approval as  dislike,  or  any  other  uncharitable 
sentiment.  Indeed,  if  all  the  persons  who  feel 
rather  sorry  for  Taft  had  voted  for  him,  he 
would  have  won.  There  aren't  a  dozen  men  in 
the  country  who  think  Taft  is  a  wicked  man. 
And  he  has  had  opportunities  to  be  wicked — 
how  he  could  have  turned  the  war  in  Mexico  to 

[140] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

his  own  purposes!  Most  of  Taft's  failings  are 
misfortunes  and  resolve  themselves  into  two 
groups :  he  took  himself  seriously  as  the  head  of 
his  party  just  at  the  moment  when  that  party, 
after  half  a  century  of  triumphant  leadership, 
completely  lost  touch  with  popular  sentiment. 
And  it  wasn't  the  party  that  changed ;  it  was  the 
country.  For  the  other,  Taft  had  a  static  tem- 
perament in  a  highly  dynamic  age.  When  all 
the  world  clamored  for  change,  he  was  strong 
for  precedent  and  the  old  ways.  He  was  out 
of  tune  with  the  times.  A  good  many  persons 
who  have  suffered  that  handicap  have  had  their 
innings  in  history  later  on.  In  many  another 
epoch,  past  and  future,  in  a  different  public  mood, 
these  qualities  of  Taft's  could  be  hailed  as  vir- 
tues. And  as  these  things  go  like  the  swing 
of  a  pendulum,  who  knows  but  if  Taft  were 
given  another  term  he  might  arrive  upon  1916  in 
steady  glory,  the  man  of  the  hour? 


LIGHT   FROM   HISTORY 

ABOSTON  reader  with  a  long  memory,  who 
gives  no  hint  of  his  identity  in  signing  him- 
self "An  Admirer  Still"  sent  us  this  postal  card : 

Dear  Collier's — I  think  it  would  be  interesting  just 
now  to  reprint  a  short  editorial  that  appeared  in  Collier's 

[141] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

nearly  three  years  ago,  I  think,  in  which  the  disruption  of 
the  Republican  party  at  this  time  was  predicted,  and  Pres- 
ident Taft  compared  with  Buchanan  just  before  the  war. 

The  paragraph  referred  to  appeared  in  Col- 
lier's for  May  28,  1910,  under  the  title  "A  Light 
from  History": 

"Many  readers  wish  to  know  why  we  rated  Mr.  Taft  so 
much  higher  two  years  ago  than  we  do  now.  Let  us  give 
an  incomplete  answer  by  offering  a  comparison.  Before 
Mr.  Buchanan's  inauguration  everything  looked  as  if  he 
were  sure  to  have  a  successful  Administration.  His  char- 
acter, ability,  and  experience  were  promising.  He  had 
been  well  educated.  He  had  been,  almost  without  inter- 
ruption, in  the  public  service.  He  had  held  positions  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  in  the  Senate,  in  the  Cab- 
inet, in  diplomacy.  As  Secretary  of  State,  in  an  Adminis- 
tration whose  foreign  problems  were  difficult,  his  record 
had  been  good.  As  Senator  he  had  stood  well.  His  service 
abroad  had  apparently  given  him  more  than  the  usual  in- 
sight into  foreign  politics.  His  character,  with  its  up- 
rightness and  caution,  was  particularly  appreciated  by  the 
thoughtful.  He  talked  well.  What  caused  Buchanan's 
failure  was  a  lack  of  harmony  between  him  and  the  needs 
of  the  moment.  Men  like  Lincoln  and  Seward,  talking 
about  irrepressible  conflicts  and  houses  divided  against 
themselves,  represented  the  stir  of  the  time,  and  all  that 
Buchanan  could  understand  was  peace.  Experience  and 
good  intentions  wasted  themselves  in  effort  after  harmony. 
In  the  end  the  President  was  found  firmly  joined  to  one 
faction,  using  his  patronage  and  influence  to  distress  the 
other.  Buchanan  chose  a  poor  Cabinet,  which  caused  sur- 
prise, considering  his  long  and  wide  acquaintance  with  men 
and  affairs.     Let  us  hope  that  the  analogy  between  his 

[142] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

Administration  and  Mr.  Taft's  will  in  the  end  prove  to  be 
fanciful  and  slight." 

The  analogy  between  Mr.  Taft  and  Bu- 
chanan is  much  more  clear  now  than  it  was  when 
his  Administration  was  only  fourteen  months  old. 


GAYNOR 

THE  Mayor  of  New  York  was  a  country 
boy  who  never  became  a  rubber  stamp.  He 
was  a  rare  American,  for  he  contributed  a  per- 
sonality to  politics.  We  like  the  photographs 
that  show  him  exercising  his  Airedale  terriers 
at  his  St.  James  home,  or  scratching  the  back 
of  a  blooded  sow  with  a  long  stick.  The  Mayor, 
who  died  suddenly  on  shipboard,  was  a  stoic  phi- 
losopher of  the  ambulatory  school.  He  had  stood 
face  to  face  with  death  without  flinching;  he 
was  a  loyal  friend  and  an  unremitting  enemy; 
was  equally  shrewd  and  testy;  was  able  as  law- 
yer, judge,  and  executive;  was  overpraised 
by  admirers  and  harshly  treated  by  opponents. 
His  most  important  public  services  were  ren- 
dered before  his  election  as  Mayor  of  our  great- 
est city,  in  1909 ;  he  was  never  truly  himself  after 
the  attempt  at  assassination,  which  left  a  bullet 
in  his  throat.  Wrong  headed  in  his  attitude  to- 
ward   police    scandals    and    District    Attorney 

[148] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

Whitman,  who  probed  them,  he  remained  ca- 
pable of  great  independence.  Tammany  refused 
to  renominate  him  as  Mayor — in  itself  a  certifi- 
cate of  character.  Then  came  his  independent 
candidacy,  and  his  denunciation  of  Murphy  and 
his  pals  as  "a  little  coterie  of  men  who  follow  poli- 
tics as  a  dishonest  trade." 

Pungent  of  speech,  Gaynor  was  a  master  of 
letter  writing.  He  ran  to  short  sentences,  and 
preferred  the  shorter  of  two  words  whenever  it 
said  as  much  as  the  longer  one.  His  simplicity 
and  directness  smacked  of  his  favorite  books — 
Marcus  Aurelius,  Epictetus,  the  "Autobiog- 
raphies" of  Cellini  and  Franklin,  the  Bible. 
It  was  not  so  much  that  Gaynor  had  read  many 
books  as  that  he  had  read  and  reread  thought- 
fully. He  held  hostile  newspaper  criticism  of 
himself  to  be  unjustified,  talking  in  public  of  our 
"rag-bag  press,"  and  welcoming  a  correspond- 
ent's comparison  of  his  fortunes  and  Lincoln's, 
even  while  confessing  that  he  did  not  deserve  it. 

"I  have  had  a  pretty  tough  time  of  it,  but  I 
have  borne  it  the  best  I  can,"  he  wrote  to  a 
sympathizer. 

"You  ask  me  to  give  an  interview  saying 
'What  I  would  say  to  the  readers  of  3,000 
newspapers,'  "  he  replied  to  a  request  of  the  Na- 
tional Publicity  Bureau.  "I  would  say  to  them 
to  be  very  careful  about  believing  all  they  see 
in  the  newspaper." 

[144] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

When  all  is  said,  one  admires  Gaynor  for  a 
"rattling,  battling  old  boy." 


MYTHOLOGY 

ANY  one  interested  in  folklore  can  get  a  cu- 
rious example  of  the  working  principles  of 
this  subject  by  comparing  the  facts  concerning 
some  of  our  national  figures  with  the  versions  of 
them  persistently  presented  by  our  cartoonists. 
Hearst,  for  example,  shown  as  a  flamboyant 
"yellow  kid,"  a  measureless  radical  enraged 
against  all  property  and  order.  The  opposing 
facts  are  that  he  is  that  marvel  of  business  abil- 
ity, an  inheritor  of  great  wealth  who  prospers 
as  a  newspaper  publisher.  He  has  mastered  this 
trade  from  ink  to  extras  as  few  men  of  his  time 
have  done.  His  profits  have  been  enormous, 
and  his  radicalism  is  whip  and  spur  to  the  cir- 
culation department.  The  masses  devour  most 
ravenously  the  Hearst  supplements  and  maga- 
zines, which  urge  that  children  be  treated  kindly, 
that  husbands  and  wives  be  faithful  and  true — 
pernicious  novelties  of  doctrine  which  Hannah 
More  and  E.  P.  Roe  would  heartily  indorse. 
Finally,  his  devotion  to  property  is  such  that  he 
seems  to  favor  war  with  Mexico  in  order  to  safe- 
guard mining  rights. 

Cartoonists  show  us  Murphy  of  Tammany 

[145] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

Hall  as  a  clumsy  dolt  in  ill-fitting  clothes, 
exposed  in  some  nefarious  enterprise.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  lives  aloof  from  the  vulgar 
on  his  country  estate — a  man  of  power  and 
silence.  He  is  attended  and  circumstanced  like 
a  first-rate  potentate — judges  admire  his  game 
of  golf,  holders  of  high  office  attend  on  him 
for  the  word  of  fate.  If  it  suited  his  taste,  legis- 
lators would  fetch  his  morning  cocoa.  Murphy 
never  explains,  never  apologizes,  never  stoops  to 
show  himself  to  "the  people"  or  to  court  their 
favor.  He  usually  wins.  Save  in  origin  and 
early  training,  he  is  no  more  democratic  than 
Louis  XIV. 

The  future  historian  who  will  free  himself 
from  current  delusions,  and  see  Hearst  and 
Murphy  for  what  they  really  are,  will  have,  by 
that  much,  the  advantage  over  contemporary 
writers. 


THE    MOVIES   AT   ALBANY 

THE  tragi-comedy  "William  Sulzer — A 
Man  of  the  People"  has  now  been  pro- 
duced by  Manager  Charles  F.  Murphy,  the 
heavy.  Before  the  curtain  fell,  the  audience's 
only  question  was:  Would  Murphy  and  his 
creatures  stab  Sulzer  in  full  sight  of  all,  or 
would  they  give  him  a  chance  to  expire  more 

[146] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

gracefully  off-stage?  Tammany  made  and  un- 
made the  fallen  hero.  The  moral  of  the  piece 
is,  for  the  people :  Don't  look  to  Tammany  for 
your  Governors.  For  the  Sulzers  it  is  this: 
Tammany  insists  on  its  enemies  being  honest. 
So  long  as  Sulzer  "played  the  game,"  his  weak- 
nesses didn't  matter.  After  he  had  dared  treat 
Boss  Murphy  disrespectfully,  they  mattered 
very  much.  Sulzer  "rose  from  the  ranks";  his 
father  was  somebody's  German  gardener.  Now, 
men  who  rise  from  the  ranks  to  positions  of  high 
trust  and  honor  owe  it  to  themselves  and  to  hu- 
manity not  to  sink  any  faster  than  they  have 
come  up.  Their  careers  may  prove  a  great  in- 
spiration— or  the  reverse — to  other  gardeners' 
sons.  This  particular  self-made  man  failed  to 
measure  up  to  his  opportunity.  He  was  never 
a  big  man;  only  a  strutting  actor  built  for  the 
movies.  His  studied  suggestion  of  Henry 
Clay  imposed  on  no  really  good  judges  of  physi- 
ognomy and  character. 

Yet  blustering  Bill  Sulzer,  who  renamed 
the  Executive  Mansion  at  Albany  "the  People's 
House,"  and  reeked  with  spectacular  simplicity, 
was  not  bad  at  heart.  Superficial  as  he  was  in 
his  democratic  and  progressive  tendencies,  he 
was  not  exactly  a  hypocrite.  His  drama  is  not 
a  play  with  a  happy  ending,  and  one's  pre- 
dominant emotions  are  disgust  and  pity:  dis- 
gust at  the  instrument  of  Sulzer's  ruin,  the  po- 

[147] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

"^^—  — — M 

litical  machine  which  personifies  all  that  is 
sinister  in  New  York's  civic  life;  pity  for  the 
well-meaning  weakling.  Had  Sulzer  been  a 
dangerously  evil  man,  he  would  have  made  his 
peace  with  Tammany  in  time  to  save  his  skin — 
in  time,  even,  to  profit  by  momentary  resistance. 
Average  citizens  have  not  joined  in  stoning  the 
lost  leader,  but  they  are  profiting  by  the  object 
lesson.  It  is  for  Tammany,  with  its  grinning 
Murphys  and  Frawleys  and  Levys,  that  an  inner 
circle  in  hell  is  being  warmed. 


SOME   LANGUAGE 

FROM  the  far  places  of  exile  rings  a  voice. 
Castro,  once  President  and  dictator  of  Ven- 
ezuela, has  a  few  thoughts  to  emit  regarding  his 
successor,  and  proceeds  to  emit  them  in  flame- 
tipped  words : 

Crime  extends  its  horrible  wings  over  the  whole  republic 
of  Venezuela.  The  crazy  and  ferocious  Gomez  bears  on 
his  forehead  the  eternal  mark  of  the  traitor.  His  brutal 
look  and  perfidious  smile  encourage  his  few  followers  to 
finish  the  ruin  of  the  fatherland.  Heroic  Venezuela  ac- 
claims me  again  to  vindicate  her  rights.  I  am  a  slave  to 
honor  and  duty,  and  I  accept  the  honor. 

As  a  president,  Castro  had  his  faults.  As  a 
rescuer  of  heroic  Venezuela  from  impending  ruin, 

[148] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

— ^^^^^— ■ — — ■ ^ — ^ - 1  ■     ——    — — — — — — — * 

a  clipper  of  the  horrible  wings  of  the  crazy  and 
ferocious  Gomez,  a  sponger  out  of  brutal  and 
perfidious,  though  encouraging,  smiles,  a  vindi- 
cating slave  to  honor  and  duty,  he  left  much 
to  be  desired.  But  as  an  inspired  orator  he  soars 
high  above  all  specifications. 

When  Castro  gets  tired  firing  high-explosive 
words  at  his  own  country  he  should  come  again  to 
this  one.  There  is  an  immediate  call  here  for  his 
brand  of  eloquence.  Tammany  needs  it  to  tell 
what  it  thinks  of  Sulzer,  and  Sulzer  to  indicate 
his  sentiments  toward  Tammany.  The  suf- 
fragists and  anti-suffragists  would  find  it  a  valu- 
able adjunct  to  their  expressions  of  mutual  es- 
teem. The  Hon.  Jo-Uncle  Cannon  might  em- 
ploy it  (in  his  milder  moments)  to  unburden  his 
soul  as  to  reform  and  reformers.  The  Castronian 
oratory  should  be  committed  to  the  talking-ma- 
chine records  as  the  basis  for  a  correspondence 
course  in  dialectics,  to  enliven  an  era  of  verbiage 
grown  all  too  dull  and  polite. 


BROTHER   AMOS 

PENNSYLVANIA  friends  teU  us  that 
folks  in  that  State  are  opposing  Gifford 
Pinchot  because  the  public  prints  have  associ- 
ated him  with  some  rather  extreme  reformers. 
We  hasten  to  inform  these  Pennsylvanians  that 

[149] 


NATIONAL     FLOOD MARKS 

they  are  confusing  Gifford  with  his  brother 
Amos.  Gifford  Pinchot  is  a  great  idealist. 
He  is  one  of  the  large  figures  of  his  generation. 
Because  of  his  identification  with  all  that  is  im- 
plied by  the  term  "conservation"  the  future  his- 
torian will  have  a  good  deal  to  say  about  him. 
Amos  Pinchot,  as  Perlmutter  would  put  it, 
"is  something  else  again."  He  is  a  young  man 
who  has  acquired  a  great  deal  of  money  by  the 
easiest  known  form  of  acquisition.  The  leisure 
which  comes  from  that  and  the  possession  of  a 
famous  brother  account  for  such  participation 
as  he  has  in  public  affairs.  Amos  is  a  Cubist 
in  politics.  He  belongs  to  the  Futurist  fringe 
of  reform.  He  is  for  most  of  the  "isms"  iden- 
tified with  current  agitation,  not  omitting  pessi- 
mism. What  he  isn't  for  he's  against.  We  cer- 
tainly hope  the  Pennsylvania  voters  won't  con- 
fuse him  with  Gifford. 


TEXAS   LION-HEART 

THE  papers  say  that  Bailey  is  going  to  try 
to  come  back  from  Texas  to  the  Senate. 
If  he  does,  our  interest  in  his  campaign  won't  be 
wholly  hostile.  He  is  against  most  of  the  things 
in  government  that  we  are  for,  but  we  know  his 
quality.  For  such  harm  as  we  think  he  ever  did, 
his  teeth  are  pulled.    Standard  Oil  will  never  re- 

[150] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

tain  him  again.  All  that  sort  of  thing  is  com- 
pletely in  the  past  of  American  politics. 

Intellectually,  Bailey  is  needed.  In  intelli- 
gence, in  education  and  experience,  in  knowledge 
of  the  philosophy  of  government,  in  personal 
force,  he  is  incomparably  the  superior  of  the  man 
who  now  holds  his  seat,  or  any  of  the  Senators 
who  came  in  as  flotsam  on  the  reform  wave.  In- 
deed, when  Bailey  was  in  the  Senate  he  was  al- 
ways among  the  first  five  strong  men.  In  any 
Senate  we  foresee  he  would  probably  be  among 
the  first  ten.  The  reform  of  the  Senate  which 
came  with  their  direct  election,  and  the  agitation 
of  the  past  few  years,  resulted,  of  course,  in  a 
higher  ideal  of  the  responsiveness  of  the  public 
servant  to  the  public  will,  but  equally  clearly  it 
resulted  in  a  distinct  intellectual  deterioration. 
What  is  needed  now  in  the  Senate  is  intelligence, 
and  devotion  to  conviction — any  sort  of  convic- 
tion— and  courage  and  force.  We  wish  Bailey 
well.  In  reality  he  is  an  incorrigible  romanticist. 
He  is  like  an  overgrown  boy  who  has  been  read- 
ing Sir  Walter  Scott  and  dramatizes  himself 
as  Ivanhoe,  Guy  Mannering,  or  Richard 
Cceur-de-Lion. 

We  heard  a  story  about  Bailey  last  Winter: 
Congressman  Neeley  of  Kansas,  discussing 
a  bill  on  the  floor,  spoke  of  the  ex- Senator  from 
Texas  as  "smeared  with  the  smell  of  Standard 
Oil."     (The  figure  of  speech  is  the  Congress- 

[151] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

man's,  not  ours.)  Bailey  heard  the  quota- 
tion and  wrote  a  letter  to  Congressman  Neeley 
demanding  personal  satisfaction,  which  he 
sent  through  the  hand  of  a  friendly  public 
man.  Neeley  paid  no  attention  to  the  incident 
until  he  received  a  second  visit  from  the  inter- 
mediary with  a  demand  for  an  answer,  and  was 
given  the  idea  that  Senator  Bailey  wanted  ac- 
tion and  satisfaction  of  the  old-fashioned  sort. 
Thereupon  Neeley,  taking  the  position  that  cus- 
tom accorded  him  the  choice  of  weapons,  sug- 
gested that  each  combatant  should  have  a  three- 
foot  length  of  bologna  sausage,  the  combatants 
to  stand  twenty  feet  apart,  and  heave. 

We  have  been  told  this  story  under  circum- 
stances which  urge  us  to  believe  it.  If  by  any 
chance  it  is  not  wholly  true,  we  hope  the  Texas 
ex-Senator  won't  call  us  to  account  for  it.  It 
makes  us  understand  him  more  clearly  and  like 
him  better. 

We  think  it  will  have  the  same  effect  with 
the  public. 


LODGE   AND    CODFISH 

TO  understand  and  appreciate  a  virtue,  but 
be  utterly  unable  to  practice  it,  is  a  com- 
mon enough  failing.  If  Henry  Cabot  Lodge 
could  assume  some  of  the  qualities  he  recognizes 

[152] 


POLITICAL    PERSONALITIES 

and  praises  in  Daniel  Webster,  the  Senate 
would  be  relieved  of  the  pettifogging  and  exas- 
perating obstructions  which  are  placed  in  the  path 
of  measures  of  broad  importance  by  one  nar- 
rowly provincial  Senator.  "After  all  has  been 
said,"  writes  Senator  Lodge,  in  his  biography  of 
Webster,  "the  question  of  most  interest  is,  what 
Mr.  Webster  represented  .  .  .  what  he  means 
in  our  history."  And  Mr.  Lodge  answers  his 
own  question:  "Webster  stands  to-day  as  the 
preeminent  champion  and  exponent  of  nation- 
ality. He  said  once:  'There  are  no  Alleghenies 
in  my  politics,'  and  he  spoke  the  exact  truth. 
Mr.  Webster  was  thoroughly  national.  There  is 
no  taint  of  sectionalism  or  narrow  local  prejudice 
about  him.  He  towers  up  as  an  American,  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  the  word." 

This  from  a  Senator  who,  more  than  any 
other,  is  known  for  having  again  and  again 
blocked  the  passage  of  bills  important  to  the 
whole  nation,  because  they  would  work  injury 
to  one  small,  industry  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Mr.  Lodge's  home!  Would  that  Mr.  Lodge 
could  say:  "There  is  no  Gloucester  in  my  poli- 
tics." Mr.  Lodge  stands  to-day  as  the  preemi- 
nent champion  and  exponent  of  codfish.  Reci- 
procity with  Newfoundland  must  fail,  because 
Mr.  Lodge's  fishermen  neighbors  might  be  hurt. 
The  Pure  Food  bill  must  be  held  up  and  de- 

[153] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

layed,  and  an  important  provision  of  it  must 
be  amended,  because  the  Gloucester  fishermen 
want  to  use  boracic  acid  to  preserve  their  prod- 
uct. Since  Mr.  Lodge  must  be  known  to  the 
world  chiefly  as  the  representative  of  one  in- 
dustry, it  is  a  pity  for  his  fame's  sake  that  this 
industry  can  not  be  a  more  dignified  and  im- 
portant one  in  its  extent,  and  a  less  circum- 
scribed one  geographically. 

Mr.  Lodge  towers  up  as  a  citizen  of  the  Penin- 
sula of  Nahant  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word. 


THE    FAILURE    OF    SUCCESS 

MR.  BRYAN'S  career  illustrates  the  high 
cost  of  a  place  in  the  sun.  So  long  as  he 
was  a  failure  he  was  a  brilliant  success.  It  was 
Mr.  Bryan's  free-silver  eloquence  as  much  per- 
haps as  any  one  force  that  stiffened  McKinley's 
backbone  as  defender  of  sound  money.  As  "Boy 
Orator,"  as  missionary  of  popular  government, 
as  vigorous  defender  of  all  the  moralistic  tru- 
isms, as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency  peren- 
nially turned  down  and  perennially  cheerful,  Mr. 
Bryan  deserved  well  of  the  Republic.  Ironically 
enough,  his  crowning  public  service,  his  action 
at  Baltimore  in  making  sure  Woodrow  Wil- 
son's nomination,  marked  the  beginning  of  the 
end. 

[154] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

For  Bryan's  public  usefulness  ended  where 
his  public  service  began.  Perhaps  he  was  dis- 
couraged from  making  a  real  effort  to  be  an 
efficient  Secretary  of  State  by  the  thought  that 
men  like  Jefferson,  Marshall,  Monroe,  Clay, 
Webster,  Calhoun,  Seward,  Bayard,  Blaine, 
Olney,  Hay,  and  Root  had  preceded  him.  That 
attainment  to  high  office  marks  not  the  crowning 
of  a  career  but  the  chance  to  carve  one  out  of 
opportunity  has  been  too  subtle  an  idea  for  Mr. 
Bryan.  His  idea  of  administering  the  foreign 
relations  of  a  great  nation  in  stirring  times  is 
aptly  suggested  in  that  foolish,  almost  shame- 
less, letter  to  W.  W.  Vice:  How  many  jobs 
have  you  for  my  friends  and  at  what  salary? 
It  reminds  one  of  Gambetta  in  France,  explain- 
ing to  Juliette  Adam  that  it  was  only  just  if 
after  leading  his  soldiers  to  battle  he  let  them 
have  the  booty. 

The  effect  of  incompetent  spoilsmanship  upon 
our  relations  with  the  other  American  repub- 
lics does  not  worry  our  Secretary  of  State 
— he  is  too  sure  of  his  own  virtue;  for  Mr. 
Bryan  has  the  f  oozly  type  of  mind  which  really 
thinks  that  good  intentions  are  all  that  is  essen- 
tial to  virtue.  To  such  a  mind  anarchy  in  Mex- 
ico is  only  a  fact — and  facts  never  deeply  con- 
cern Mr.  Bryan.  An  idealist  in  all  things  but 
performance,  Mr.  Bryan  is  not  ashamed  to  be 
found  out;  he  claims  to  be  proud  of  his  loyalty 

[155] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABKS 

to  his  friends.  It  will  be  his  epitaph  that  his 
life  as  an  effective  politician  ended  when  an 
opportunity  was  given  him  to  prove  himself  a 
statesman.  He  worked  to  give  the  nation  Wil- 
son— but  after  that  beginning  he  made  of  him- 
self a  millstone  for  Mr.  Wilson's  neck. 


POETRY 

IN"  this  era  of  dangerous  political  experiments 
and  economic  heresies,  when  men's  minds  are 
so  tolerant  of  innovation  that  they  listen  without 
horror  to  schemes  for  changing  the  very  fabric 
of  the  Constitution  itself,  it  is  soothing  to  know 
there  is  one  statesman  who  stands  firm  by  the 
rock  of  established  things.  His  mind  is  adamant 
alike  against  the  fallacies  of  altruistic  dreamers 
and  the  errors,  schisms,  hallucinations,  and  fun- 
damental unsoundnesses  of  blatant  heresiarchs. 
For  him,  no  loose  talk,  no  irrational  monomani- 
acal  frenzies  of  the  radicals. 

His  sound  conservatism,  his  anchorage  to 
the  basic  rocks  of  the  tried  and  tested,  are 
splendidly  expressed  in  a  fugitive  bit  of  poetry 
in  a  Missouri  paper.  Lack  of  space  forbids, 
unhappily,  the  reproduction  of  the  first  two 
stanzas,  wherein  the  poet  points  out  the  identity 
of  Mr.  Fairbanks,  since  his  first  entry  into 
politics,  with  the  established  principle  of  gov- 

[156] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

eminent  that,  so  long  as  there  is  not  a  conden- 
sation of  atmospheric  vapor  into  drops  large 
enough  to  attain  sensible  velocity,  those  condi- 
tions commonly  known  collectively  as  the  weather 
will  remain  in  the  state  popularly  known  as  dry. 
However,  the  concluding  stanzas  suggest  the  fun- 
damental stability  of  the  beliefs  of  the  Indiana 
statesman: 

Then  Mr.  Fairbanks  waxed  quite  warm; 

His  voice  riz  to  a  roar. 
He  yelled:    "I  say  to  you,  my  friends, 

That  two  and  two  make  four." 
And  thereupon  all  doubts  dissolved, 

All  fears  were  put  to  rout; 
Pie-seekers  said  that  Fairbanks  knew 

Just  what  he  was  about. 

He  did  not  name  unbusted  trusts 

Or  mention  Standard  Oil; 
He  did  not  talk  of  railroad  graft 

Nor  speak  of  children's  toil. 
He  said  the  crops  looked  mighty  well, 

The  cattle  all  seemed  fat, 
The  sky  was  blue,  the  grass  still  grew, 

And  the  G.  O.  P.  stood  pat. 

And  he  let  it  go  at  that. 

There  is,  among  the  well-informed,  a  fugi- 
tive rumor  that  the  subject  of  these  verses  might, 
if  the  urgency  of  the  country's  need  were  suffi- 
ciently impressed  upon  him,  be  persuaded  to  ac- 
cept the  office  of  President.  Is  it  not  time  for 
patriots  to  unite  in  a  call? 

[157] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAKKS 


OUTDOORS   AND    INDOORS 

IT  is  as  an  inspiration  of  wholesome  living  that 
Theodore  Roosevelt's  "Autobiography" 
makes  its  deepest  appeal.  The  political  chapters 
are  not  without  interest,  nor  is  the  chapter  on 
cowboy  land,  with  its  anecdotes  of  hard  riding 
and  encounters  with  man  and  beast.  But  we 
take  most  pleasure  in  the  descriptions  of  family 
life  where  Mr.  Roosevelt  figures — first  of  all  as 
a  puny  youngster,  with  a  keen  interest  in  Indian 
fights  and  miscellaneous  "specimens";  later  on 
as  the  responsible  head  of  a  large  household.  Is 
it  too  much  to  say  that  the  author-President's 
most  valuable  gift  to  this  nation  is  the  example 
he  has  set  in  prizing  and  praising  the  durable 
satisfactions  of  life — the  essentials  that  do  not 
cost  most,  in  the  long  run,  yet  are  inevitably 
worth  most?  In  the  Foreword  to  the  "Auto- 
biography" we  read: 

There  is  need  to  develop  all  the  virtues  that  have  the 
State  for  their  sphere  of  action;  but  these  virtues  are  as 
dust  in  a  windy  street  unless  back  of  them  lie  the  strong 
and  tender  virtues  of  a  family  life  based  on  the  love  of 
one  man  for  one  woman  and  on  their  joyous  and  fearless 
acceptance  of  their  common  obligation  to  the  children  that 
are  theirs. 

Roosevelt  has  been  called  a  master  of  plati- 
tude. He  is.  And  here  is  one  of  the  platitudes  we 

[158] 


POLITICAL     PERSONALITIES 

aren't  tired  of.  Moreover  it  has  positive  fresh- 
ness at  a  moment  when  there  is  increasingly  loose 
phrase  weaving  about  the  new  eroticism.  But 
the  way  of  virtue  and  duty  is  not  all  stone  by 
the  Roosevelt  view.  You  don't  have  to  die  and 
go  to  heaven  to  cash  in  its  reward.  No  dust 
and  ashes  cloud  this  wine  of  life. 


[159] 


X 

THE  PRESS 


FOR    US    SCRIBES 

GOOD  motto  for  editors  is  this  one  of 
King  Solomon's  invention: 


A 


Buy  the  truth,  and  sell  it  not;  also  wisdom,  and  instruc- 
tion, and  understanding. 


"INDEPENDENCE"   AND   JOURNALISM 

TO  most  folks  an  independent  paper  is  one 
that  supports  their  side;  the  one  that  sup- 
ports the  other  side  is  partisan.  Also,  there 
seems  to  be  something  in  human  nature  which 
reacts  against  the  idea  of  a  really  independent 
paper — a  paper,  that  is  to  say,  which  supports 
the  better  acts  of  a  man  or  a  party  and  condemns 
the  less  desirable  ones.  Perhaps  it  is  mixed  up 
with  the  universal  human  liking  for  the  quality 
of  loyalty.  To  interrupt  a  course  of  praise 
seems,  of  course,  like  the  unpleasing  trait  of  dis- 
loyalty.   But  is  there  anything  else  for  a  really 

[160] 


THE     PRESS 


independent  paper  to  do?  Many  a  paper  which 
regards  itself  as  independent  merely  contents 
itself  with  keeping  silent  about  the  things  it  can- 
not conscientiously  praise.  In  the  nature  of 
things,  a  really  independent  paper  cannot  inspire 
universal  affection.  It  is  on  the  fence,  and  it  is 
going  to  get  the  bricks  from  both  sides.  In  spite 
of  all  the  talk  about  an  independent  press,  in 
spite  of  the  great  growth  of  the  independent  vote, 
the  only  really  independent  papers  in  this  coun- 
try continue  to  be  the  ones  that  have  held  to  that 
rule  for  more  than  a  generation,  such  as  the  New 
York  "Evening  Post"  and  the  Springfield 
(Mass.)  "Republican."  The  editorial  page  of 
the  New  York  "World,"  which  has  been  for 
more  than  thirty  years  a  remarkably  able  and 
virile  critic  of  public  affairs,  has  been,  of  inten- 
tion, prevailingly  Democratic.  It  has  not  been 
independent  in  the  sense  of  detached  regard,  or 
disregard,  of  all  parties  and  all  leaders  alike. 


A    NEBRASKA    JOURNALIST    SPEAKS 

PEOPLE  have  no  confidence  in  great  news- 
papers, says  Mr.  Bryan,  "because  they  are 
big  enterprises  too  much  influenced  by  big  busi- 
ness interests."  It  is  true  that  great  newspapers 
are  "big  enterprises" — and  that  is,  as  the  New 
York  "World"  observes,  just  what  tends  to  pre- 

[161] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABE8 

vent  their  being  influenced  in  any  sinister  sense 
by  "big  business."  Great  newspapers  are,  or  can 
be,  independent  of  both  big  and  little  busi- 
nesses: individually  speaking,  for,  of  course, 
every  newspaper  depends  upon  business  taken 
collectively  for  its  prosperity  and  even  for  its 
bare  existence.  But  the  great  newspapers  of 
Chicago  and  New  York  are  probably  less  af- 
fected, on  the  whole,  by  the  railway  influence  or 
the  quack  influence  or  the  booze  influence  than 
are  the  struggling  little  newspapers  of  the  small 
towns. 


WHAT   DOES   A   NEWSPAPER   MEAN? 

TWO  or  three  months  ago  the  Hartford 
( Conn. )  "Courant"  got  out  a  ninety-six-page 
edition  to  celebrate  its  one  hundred  and  fiftieth 
birthday.  No.  1  of  the  "Courant"  was  "printed 
by  Thomas  Green  at  the  Heart  &  Crown  near 
the  North  Meeting-House,"  and  boldly  asserted: 

Was  it  not  for  the  Press  we  should  be  left  almost  in- 
tirely  ignorant  of  all  those  noble  Sentiments  which  the 
Antients  were  endow'd  with. 

The  "Courant,"  for  one,  has  held  to  its  tradi- 
tions fairly  well.  Though  the  "noble  sentiments" 
of  our  press  are  somewhat  obscured  in  some 

[162] 


THE     PRESS 


printing  offices  by  the  rush  and  roar  of  patent- 
medicine  advertising  (see  Mr.  Bryan's  "Com- 
moner"), we  believe  the  older  creed  is  coming 
back;  that  social  service,  the  betterment  of  life, 
the  ennobling  of  the  human  spirit,  are  to  become 
more  and  more  the  conscious  goal  of  journalism. 
What  does  a  newspaper  mean  to  you? 


TAINTED   NEWS 

PHILADELPHIA  has  no  newspaper  which 
is  not  frequently  and  tightly  gagged  by  the 
business  interests  which  control  its  department 
stores,  and  the  same  sort  of  alliance  is  not  un- 
known in  other  cities.  A  few  weeks  ago  a  pro- 
prietor of  a  large  department  store  in  Philadel- 
phia was  arrested  and  committed  suicide  under 
circumstances  which  called  out,  morning  after 
morning,  the  largest  headlines  on  the  front  pages 
of  the  New  York  dailies.  To  this  day,  no  Phil- 
adelphian  who  confines  his  reading  to  his  local 
papers  knows  anything  about  that  incident.  The 
Philadelphia  papers  might  explain  their  silence 
on  the  ground  of  a  taste  above  such  horrors; 
we  should  accept  the  theory  if  we  felt  sure  that 
they  made  no  distinction  between  victims  of  scan- 
dal who  run  full-page  advertisements  every  day 
and  unfortunates  who  do  not. 

[163] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ABKS 


GOOD    HUNTING 

QUACK  doctors  are  the  most  vulnerable  of 
big  game.  How  astonishingly  tender  their 
commercial  susceptibilities  are  has  been  shown  by 
the  Chicago  "Tribune."  One  week  of  exposure 
through  the  "Tribune's"  columns  practically 
ruined  every  venereal  disease  quack  in  the  city. 
Some  shut  up  shop  and  disappeared.  Others 
sat  idle  in  empty  offices,  forlorn  spiders  at  the 
center  of  flyless  webs.  Never  before  was  so  pow- 
erful and  profitable  an  industry  brought  to  such 
instant  wreckage.  What  destroyed  this  pirate 
trade  was  not  alone  the  direct  result  of  the  ex- 
posures, definite  and  potent  though  that  was. 
The  lethal  blow  was  the  eviction  of  all  this  class 
of  advertising  from  the  daily  press.  Within  four 
days  of  the  "Tribune's"  declaration  of  war  every 
morning  and  afternoon  paper  in  the  city  which 
was  carrying  this  class  of  copy  had  been  shamed 
or  alarmed  into  throwing  it  out.  The  evening 
paper  of  William  R.  Hearst,  who  a  year  ago 
bragged  mightily  of  having  foregone  his  alliance 
with  quacks,  was  forced  to  exclude  advertising 
which  represents  in  the  neighborhood  of  $70,000 
a  year  blood  money  to  that  apostle  of  journalistic 
purity.  Finally,  the  militant  "Tribune"  gives 
notice  of  its  intention  to  stir  up  prosecutions  un- 
der the  law;  or,  if  the  present  law  be  inadequate, 

[164] 


THE     PRESS 


to  agitate  for  the  enactment  of  a  stronger  statute 
under  which  the  malefactors  may  be  brought  to 
book.  In  view  of  this  newspaper's  established 
reputation  for  carrying  out  whatever  it  under- 
takes to  the  fullest  conclusion,  it  is  a  fairly  safe 
prophecy  that  in  Chicago  the  venereal  quackery 
game  is  up.  Out  in  Seattle  the  "Sun,"  a  lusty 
infant  of  Far  Western  journalism,  performed 
a  like  service  for  its  city;  and  some  years  ago 
the  Cleveland  "Press"  made  a  valiant  but  only 
partly  successful  effort  in  that  vicinity.  But  the 
Chicago  campaign  has  been  by  far  the  broadest 
and  most  significant.  On  its  letterhead  the 
"Tribune"  terms  itself  "The  World's  Greatest 
Newspaper."  To  our  mind  its  anti-quack  victory 
goes  far  toward  making  the  boast  good. 


RESPONSIBILITY 

SAYS  one  of  the  quarry  of  the  "Tribune's" 
quack  hunt:  "I  have  paid  most  of  what  I 
made  to  newspapers  that  printed  my  ads." 
Despite  its  source,  that  statement  is  indubitably 
true.  Without  newspaper  advertising  no  quack 
can  hope  to  do  business.  The  "Tribune,"  in  its 
articles,  showed  that  as  soon  as  the  advertising 
was  cut  off  the  venereal  sharks  ceased  to  receive 
patients  enough  to  keep  their  offices  going.  Con- 
sider, you  newspaper  reader,  the  true  significance 

[165] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

of  this.  It  means  that  the  responsibility  for 
quackery  in  your  town  rests  with  your  daily 
paper.  If  the  newspaper  owner  didn't  accept 
that  poisoned  money  the  quack  couldn't  con- 
tinue to  take  his  profit  of  human  terror  and 
human  misery.  And  the  responsibility  of  the 
newspaper  is  readily  brought  home.  No  use  in 
attacking  the  quack  except  by  process  of  law, 
and  most  State  laws  along  this  line  are  wretch- 
edly flimsy.  Moral  suasion  cannot  influence  the 
crooked  practitioner  because  he  has  no  charac- 
ter. But  a  newspaper  has  a  character,  and  that 
character  is  part  of  its  capital.  Where  the  emol- 
uments of  evil  advertising  bring  open  disgrace 
upon  a  journal  that  journal  will  drop  the  adver- 
tising. 

It  took  the  "Tribune"  but  four  days  to  clean 
up  every  newspaper  in  Chicago.  In  Port- 
land the  papers  were  compelled  by  force  of  pub- 
lic opinion,  voiced  through  a  committee  of  citi- 
zens, to  discard  this  class  of  business;  and  now 
there  are  no  venereal  quacks  in  Portland. 
What  city  will  be  next  in  line?  The  task 
is  possible  to  any  community  which  can  organize 
public  opinion.  The  method  is  simple  and  direct. 
Compel  the  newspapers,  by  force  of  fear  or  by 
the  persuasions  of  decency,  to  cleanse  their  col- 
umns, and  quackery  will  promptly  and  surely  die 
of  inanition. 

[166] 


THE     PRESS 


THE   BIBLE   AS   A   NEWSPAPER    SERIAL 

FOR  a  newspaper  to  reprint  a  "best  seller," 
a  chapter  or  two  to  the  issue,  is  no  journal- 
istic novelty.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  the  idea  of 
publishing  in  serial  form  the  best  seller  of  all 
best  sellers  is  an  experiment  so  unusual  that  it 
is  attracting  wide  publicity.  If  you  haven't  hap- 
pened to  notice  the  statistics,  you  may  not  know 
that  the  book  which  leads  all  others  in  sales  is 
the  Bible.  Editor  W.  W.  Folsom  of  Hope, 
Ark.,  is  reprinting  the  Bible  in  his  "Ga- 
zette," a  chapter  a  week.  To  date  he  has  com- 
pleted the  publication  of  the  Four  Gospels,  and 
the  feature  has  proved  so  popular  that  the  other 
day  he  notified  the  Little  Rock  Board  of  Trade 
that  if  he  lives  long  enough  to  reprint  the  New 
Testament  in  its  entirety  (he  is  now  seventy-six) 
he  will  then  begin  to  reprint  it  a  second  time. 

Not  so  very  long  ago  the  library  table  in  an 
American  farmhouse  sitting  room  used  to  dis- 
play only  a  patent-medicine  almanac,  a  copy  of 
the  "Weekly  Tribune,"  and  a  family  Bible.  In 
recent  years  the  R.  F.  D.  has  weighted  down 
the  red  tablecloth  with  a  variety  of  other  reading 
matter.  Has  it  befallen  that,  to  make  room  for 
numerous  magazines,  dailies,  and  novels,  the 
bulky,  brass-bound  Bible  has  been  relegated  to 
the  table's  lower  shelf,  where  a  thin  layer  of  dust 

[167] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

is  settling  on  its  cover?  If  so,  Editor  Folsom 
is  restoring  in  Hope  the  old  order  of  life  cele- 
brated in  an  ode  to  "Kansas,  1897": 

When  the  cares  o'  day  is  done 

On  the  plains  o'  Kansas 
An'  the  kids  begin  to  yawn, 

Sleepy  like,  in  Kansas, 
Farmer  wipes  his  glasses  blurred; 
Reads  a  chapter  o'  the  Word; 
Then  kneels  down  and  thanks  the  Lord 

That  he  lives  in  Kansas. 


A   VICTIM    OF   CIRCUMSTANCE 

A  MAN  of  vast  wealth  dies,  and  his  son,  just 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  succeeds  him  as 
"head  of  the  family."  This  young  man  is  pre- 
sumably one  of  generous,  likable  parts;  no 
brighter,  no  abler,  than  thousands  of  boys  work- 
ing for  $15  a  week.  He  is  probably  decently 
disposed  to  go  about  his  daily  life  of  work  and 
play,  and  mind  his  own  business.  But  this  he 
cannot  do  as  other  youngsters  do.  Almost 
every  day  his  least  movement  or  doing  is  chron- 
icled in  the  press  with  all  the  circumstance  of  a 
candidate  for  the  Presidency.  All  the  Powers  of 
Foolishness  conspire  to  make  him  their  very  own 
by  adoption.  The  papers  print  it  and  people  read 
it.    Which  is  initial,  the  supply  or  the  demand? 

[168] 


THE     PRESS 


SPLASH! 

HOW  dull  would  life  be  without  the  country- 
correspondent.  From  a  thousand  obscure 
hamlets  he  contributes  his  iota  of  innocent  uplift 
to  enlighten  the  aggregate  burden  of  existence. 
At  present  blessings  are  due  to  some  unidentified 
Horace  Greeley  of  North  Falmouth,  Mass. 
Hark  to  his  tidings  of  great  joy:  "Manuel 
White  is  almost  ready  to  be  connected  with  the 
town  water,  which  will  be  a  great  convenience  for 
him."  Convenience!  Mark  the  scholarly  re- 
straint of  the  phrase.  Convenience,  indeed,  with 
the  thermometer  at  ninety-five  degrees  in  the 
shade  of  the  electric  fan!  Transport,  rather; 
ecstasy,  beatitude,  elysium,  paradise.  Would 
that  we  might,  at  the  present  perfervid  moment 
of  writing,  enjoy  Manuel's  prospects  and  look 
forward  confidently  to  being  connected  with  the 
North  Falmouth  or  any  other  town  water — a 
double  connection,  if  you  please,  one  at  the  base 
of  our  swooning  brain,  the  other  at  the  further 
terminus  of  our  sizzling  spinal  column.  And  if 
the  North  Falmouth  cannot  more  than  supply 
Mr.  White's  aquatic  needs,  we  might  go  fur- 
ther and  fare  worse.  On  consideration,  what  we 
really  yearn  for  is  to  link  ourselves  to  the  Yukon 
River,  and  when  that  has  flowed  past  we  should 
rejoice  to  act,  until  further  orders,  as  channel 

[169] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

for  the  Arctic  Ocean,  being  perfectly  willing  to 
overlook  casual  polar  bears,  walruses,  and  other 
fauna  of  the  region,  for  the  sake  of  an  iceberg  or 
two  thrown  in. 

Hydrotherapy  for  ours,  and  plenty  of  it! 
Meantime,  hats  off  to  Manuel!  He  has  gone 
far  toward  the  solution  of  the  hot-weather  prob- 
lem. 


BUT   WHY    SHOULD    HOOSIERS    DIE? 

SUFFERERS  from  any  ill  that  flesh  is  heir 
to  should  subscribe  to  the  venerable  "Cour- 
ier," which  furnishes  light  and  leading  to  the 
town  of  Evansville,  Ind.  Whereas  most  jour- 
nals subsidized  by  the  Great  American  Fraud 
publish  advertisements  of  only  a  few  choice  ex- 
amples of  quackery,  the  "Courier"  has  them  all. 
Here  are  some  specimen  ailments  and  the 
"Courier's"  sure  cures — arranged  alphabetically 
for  quick  reference: 

The  Disease  The  Remedy 

Age Duffy's  Malt  Whiskey. 

Bad  blood Hood's       Sarsaparilla,      Dr. 

Williams'  Pink  Pills. 

Catarrh Kondon's  Jelly. 

Colds  and  coughs     .     .     .     .Ely's    Cream    Balm,    Pape's 

Cold     Compound,     Pinex, 
Vinol. 
[170] 


THE     PRESS 


Colds   or  indigestion     .     .     Globe  Pine  Compound. 

Consumption Dr.   King's  Discovery. 

Dandruff  and  falling  hair     Parisian  Sage,  Danderine. 

Diseases  of  men  ....     Pabst's    Okay    Specific,    Dr. 

Luckett's  remedies. 

Dyspepsia Caldwell's  Syrup  Pepsin. 

Epilepsy Kosine. 

Eye  troubles Optona. 

Headache New  Life  Pills. 

Indigestion Pape's  Diapepsin. 

Itch Resinol. 

Kidney  and  bladder  com-  Kilmer's  Swamp  Root,  Crox- 
plaints one,  Jad  Salts. 

Liquor  habit Orrine. 

Nerves Warner's  Nervine. 

Paleness Ayer's  Sarsaparilla. 

Piles  (curable  at  home)     .     Pyramid. 

Rheumatism Mark  Jackson's  prescrip- 
tions, St.  Jacob's  Oil, 
Toris,  Warner's  Safe 
Rheumatic   Remedy. 

Skin  diseases Zemo,  Saxo  Salve. 

Toothache E-Z  Tooth  Filler. 

Tuberculosis  of  the  glands     Erknan's  Alterative. 

Ulcers Bucklen's  Arnica  Salve. 

Women's  diseases     .     .     .     Mother's    Friend,    Lydia    E. 

Pinkham's  Pills,  Orange 
Blossom,  Dr.  Pierce's  Fa- 
vorite Prescription,  Car- 
dui. 

Worms Kickapoo. 

All  diseases Grove's  Tonic. 

In  justice  to  the  Evansville  "Courier,"  we  has- 
ten to  add  that  this  little  table  does  not  include  all 

[171] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

the  remedies,  restoratives,  specifics,  palliatives, 
febrifuges,  boluses,  Galenicals,  simples,  tinctures, 
nostrums,  cerates,  and  ptisans  for  which  space  is 
bought  in  its  liberally  conducted  columns.  Old 
Doc  Warner  offers  to  cure  a  great  many  dis- 
tempers which  we  forbear  to  list;  the  Every- 
woman  Company  philanthropically  offers  to 
make  sylphs  of  the  obese;  Menthoeze  is,  we  de- 
duce from  the  "Courier,"  good  for  almost  any 
malady;  Wyeth's  Sage  and  Sulphur  darkens 
gray  hair  so  that  "no  one  can  tell" — and  what 
shall  we  say  of  Foley's  wonderful  pills  and  Ren- 
war,  and  all  the  other  doses? 

Evansville  offers  extraordinary  inducements 
for  the  young  physician.  Comparatively  few 
users  of  these  concoctions  are  killed  outright.  It 
takes  more  than  quacksalvers  and  medicasters  to 
do  for  some  folk.  Moreover,  there  is  room  for 
other  professions  than  the  doctor's,  and  when  the 
hardy  Hoosier  does  die,  he  has  to  be  buried — so 
that  the  "Courier"  advertises  the  very  best  of 
tombstones. 

Three  cheers  for  dope! 


FACT   FICTIONS 

THE  romances  that  actually  happen  are  so 
many  that  we  are  in  a  fair  way  to  miss  their 
full  value.    Consider  the  case  of  Adelaide  M. 

[172] 


THE     PRESS 


Brance,  the  woman  whom  an  up- State  lawyer 
in  New  York  hid  in  his  offices  for  three  years; 
with  whom  he  spent  a  great  deal  more  time  than 
with  his  wife  and  family;  and  all  this  without 
anyone  in  the  curious  little  town  ever  once  sus- 
pecting it!  This  mysterious  romance  was  pub- 
lished only  when  the  sudden  death  of  one  of  the 
principals  cut  it  short ;  yet  it  is  more  improbable 
than  tales  of  Balzac  and  of  Mrs.  Wharton 
with  much  the  same  plot.  In  the  same  week  that 
saw  publicity  given  to  this  story,  four  men  sat 
drinking  in  a  sailors'  hotel  on  the  New  York 
river  front.  They  plotted  there  a  piece  of  night 
brigandage  that  transcends  in  sheer  effrontery 
any  tale  of  Chinese  river  pirates  published  be- 
tween lurid  covers.  On  Christmas  Eve,  amid 
circumstances  that  would  have  distinguished  a 
novel  by  Eugene  Sue,  they  seized  a  tug,  kid- 
naped a  railway  barge,  looted  a  string  of  freight 
cars,  turned  the  barge  adrift,  and  transferred 
their  plunder  to  waiting  wagons  in  somnolent 
Brooklyn.  What  their  next  move  was,  nobody 
knows.  And  here  is  one  more  news  item — out  of 
the  same  week's  papers:  A  British  peeress  (by 
marriage)  enters  the  convent  of  the  "Poor 
Clares"  at  Edinburgh — one  of  the  strictest  con- 
ventual establishments  in  all  the  world.  Before 
she  was  Lady  Lyveden,  this  woman  was  a  shop- 
girl. Shopgirl,  baroness,  nun.  There  is  no  more 
striking  series  of  transmutations  in  Marie  Co- 

[173] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARE8 

belli,   Ouida,   or    (we're  thinking  of  "Sister 
Teresa")  George  Moore. 

No  wonder  Stevenson  said  that  there  was 
matter  for  an  epic  in  every  issue  of  a  one-cent 
newspaper.    Only  sometimes  we  lack  the  poet. 


A   KENTUCKY   METAPHOR 

EVERY  Kentuckian  is  born  to  the  literary 
purple.  His  first  articulate  cry  is  a  dactyl; 
he  prattles  in  hexameters.  We  are  not  always 
deeply  impressed  by  everything  the  Bluegrass 
editor  says;  but  the  way  he  says  it — his  verbal 
pyrotechnics,  his  lingual  chiaroscuro,  his  sudden 
swoops  and  pirouettings,  the  rumbling  thunder  of 
his  polysyllables,  the  rippling  tinkle  of  his 
penults — these  delight  us  perennially.  The  Ken- 
tucky Colonels  are  fountains  of  words ;  they  flow 
from  them  with  the  murmuring  gurgle  of  bot- 
tled-in-bond  from  a  Pendennis  Club  jug,  the 
gentle  tinkle  of  ice  in  a  julep  glass.  Consider  the 
Honorable  Augustus  Owsley  Stanley,  Mem- 
ber of  Congress  from  Henderson  County.  Con- 
gressman Stanley  was  endeavoring  to  picture 
to  his  fellow-statesmen  the  more  subtle  and 
recherche  qualities  of  a  beverage  which  is  one  of 
the  chief  commercial  products  of  his  own  dis- 
trict. "It  will,"  said  he,  in  describing  the  local 
brand,  "turn  an  anchorite  into  a  howling  dervish, 

[174] 


THE     PRESS 


and  make  a  rabbit  spit  in  a  bulldog's  face." 
Now,  there  is  real  literature  for  you.  Picture  the 
scene.  Was  the  quality  of  inspiring  reckless  dar- 
ing, of  filling  with  death-defying,  fate-scorning 
courage,  ever  so  concisely,  so  aptly,  so  vividly  ex- 
pressed as  by  picturing  the  timid,  shrinking,  and 
pusillanimous  bunny  spitting  defiantly  into  the 
menacing  countenance  of  the  fierce  and  terrible 
bulldog?  Beside  this,  how  inept  and  futile  those 
clumsy  figures  of  speech  with  which  Homer  tried 
to  tell  how  brave  his  heroes  were,  how  tame  and 
tautologous  Shakespeare's  description  of  the 
courage-inspiring  virtues  of  sack:  "Warming  of 
the  blood;  which,  before,  cold  and  settled,  left 
the  liver  white  and  pale,  which  is  the  badge  of 
pusillanimity  and  cowardice."  It  is  no  disap- 
pointment to  our  pleased  anticipations  to  learn 
that  Congressman  Stanley  is  an  emeritus  pro- 
fessor of  belles-lettres  in  a  Kentucky  college. 


THAT   PERSONAL   NOTE 

THE  personal  note  is  struck  in  different 
ways  by  different  individuals.  The  New 
York  firm  of  Rogers  Peet  &  Co.  strike  it  in  one 
of  their  advertisements  in  asserting  that  "not 
the  least  of  our  business  assets  are  the  'men  be- 
hind the  counter.'  "  The  advertisement  is  worth 
reading: 

[175] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

For  the  most  part,  they've  grown  up  with  us  and  conse- 
quently "know  the  business"  from  A  to  Z. 

Mr.  Lemuel  R.  Kniffin,  for  some  years  in  charge  of 
the  Livery  and  Auto  Wear  Department  of  our  Thirteenth 
Street  Store,  is  spending  the  summer  at  Newport. 

He  is  not  there  for  his  health  or  pleasure,  but  to  help 
our  Newport  representative  reorganize  his  business  and 
put  it  on  an  up-to-date  basis.    You  see  we  make  merchants. 

Whoever  reads  thus  far  in  the  advertisement 
reads  to  the  end.  He  wants  to  learn  more  of  the 
competent  Mr.  Kniffin  and  his  summer  plans; 
failing  in  that,  something  of  Edward  J.  Tracey, 
described  as  "another  good  one,"  who  mean- 
while receives  Mr.  Kniffin's  customers  and  sells 
them  Norfolk  suits,  leggings,  caps,  goggles,  rub- 
ber coats,  and  gauntlets  with  reenforced  palms. 

The  literary  critics  talk  of  the  "personal  note" 
in  literature;  let  them  go  to  the  wise  advertiser. 


RELIGIOUS    PAPERS 

FOR  money,  the  religious  papers  which  carry 
patent-medicine  advertisements  prostitute 
their  columns ;  when  the  balance  of  profit  points 
the  other  way,  they  will  clean  their  columns  up. 
Here  is  one  case  where  the  means  of  reform  is 
simple,  sure,  and  direct.  Mr.  Charles  Hughes 
of  Jellico,  Tennessee,  knows  it.  He  sent  this  let- 
ter to  the  religious  paper  which  has  been  coming 
to  his  family: 

[176] 


THE     PRESS 


Gentlemen — When  my  subscription  to  the  "Standard" 
expires,  please  discontinue  same,  as  I  do  not  care  to  sub- 
scribe or  even  read  a  paper  that  carries  as  many  quack  and 
fraudulent  advertisements  as  the  "Standard."  It  is  a 
pity  that  a  paper  supposed  to  be  published  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  Christian  religion  and  for  the  bettering,  the 
uplifting,  and  educating  of  the  people  should  descend  so 
low  as  to  endorse  and  carry  such  advertisements.  When 
you  rid  your  columns  of  such  trash,  I  will  be  glad  to  again 
become  a  reader  of  your  paper. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Charles  Hughes. 

Conferences,  synods,  or  such  other  religious  or- 
ganizations as  have  official  supervision  of  offend- 
ing papers,  can  supplement  this  method  effec- 
tively; and  even  privately  owned,  free-lance  re- 
ligious papers  would  have  a  wholesome  respect 
for  a  few  winged  words  from  the  organizations 
to  whose  members  they  cater. 


UNCOMMERCIAL   ADVERTISING 

ADVERTISING  is  no  longer  the  servant  of 
commerce  alone.  Churches  are  learning  its 
uses.  But  the  past  master  in  the  art  is  the  Cin- 
cinnati Zoological  Garden.  Though  this  insti- 
tution is  privately  owned,  there  is  no  reason  why 
its  example  should  not  be  followed  by  municipal 
gardens.  The  motto  of  the  Cincinnati  Zoo  is: 
"We  belong  to  you ;  your  admission  is  your  con- 

[177] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

tribution" — and  the  gatemen  admit  enough  of 
the  city's  population  year  after  year  to  make  the 
gathering  profitable.  Every  street  car  in  town 
carries  its  cards,  and  they  make  by  far  the  most 
interesting  reading  to  be  found  there.  One  of 
them  shows  a  picture  of  the  Zoo's  ostriches  with 
this  line  of  type : 

Do  you  know  why  the  ostrich  is  the  best  father  in  the 
world  ? 

A  Week  later  it  is  a  portrait  of  camels,  introduced 
with  the  query : 

Do   you   know   what   arrangement   enables    a   camel   to 
breathe  in  a  sand  storm  where  other  animals  would  perish  ? 

And  at  the  Zoo  itself  a  little  paper  is  sold  for  five 
cents,  answering  all  the  questions  and  yielding  a 
wealth  of  natural  history  in  popular  tabloid  form. 
There  is  a  suggestion  here  for  art  museums 
and  libraries.  In  the  case  of  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  in  New  York,  the  following  might  im- 
pinge on  the  Manhattanite's  ruling  passion: 

This  painting,  by  Paolo  Veronese,  cost  $300,000;  you 
can  enjoy  it  on  Saturdays  for  nothing. 

And  the  public  library  in  Anytown  could  beyond 
a  doubt  increase  its  circulation  by  issuing  such 
cards  as  these : 

Napoleon  said:    "Show  me  a  family  of  readers  and 
I  will  show  you  the  people  who  rule  the  world." 
How  much  reading  is  your  family  doing? 
[178] 


THE     PRESS 


The  Public  Library  buys  100  new  books  every  month. 
Two  of  them  are  yours  for  the  asking. 

Publicity  may  yet  prove  to  be  the  handmaiden 
of  the  arts,  if  not  their  mother. 


PLAYING   ON   THE   PUBLIC 

T  ]f  THAT  great  man  would  make  the  best 
V  V  modern  editorial  writer,  when  masses 
have  to  be  fed  with  ideas,  stimulated,  sometimes 
guided,  is  a  question  that  has  brought  many  re- 
sponses since  we  sprang  it  on  our  readers.  The 
nominations  now  include  Dickens,  Macaulay, 
Voltaire,  and  Defoe.  Victor  Hugo,  who  is 
suggested  by  a  correspondent  from  St.  Paul,  cer- 
tainly stirred  the  public  opinion  of  his  country, 
immediately  and  strongly,  both  in  prose  and 
verse.  From  Toledo  comes  the  name  of  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau.  An  intelligent  observer 
from  Providence,  R.  I.,  nominates  Walter 
Bagehot,  who,  however,  seems  to  us  better  fitted 
to  lend  great  power  to  a  paper  like  the  New  York 
"Evening  Post"  or  the  Springfield  "Republi- 
can" than  to  the  publications  of  very  wide  circu- 
lation. Henry  George,  whose  name  is  sent  in 
from  Rome,  Ga.,  although  more  generally  known 
for  his  taxation  scheme,  comes  as  near  as  we  can 
trace  to  being  the  founder  of  the  modern  critical, 

[179] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEK8 

looking-under-the-surface,  or  muckraking  school. 
Benjamin  Franklin  is  mentioned,  from  Phila- 
delphia, in  these  terms: 

With  him  as  editor  I  would  at  once  send  in  my  subscrip- 
tion for  life.  He  very  nearly  combined  the  broad  learning 
of  Macaulay,  the  wit  of  Swift,  and  the  satire  of  Vol- 
taire. He  knew  as  much  of  human  nature  as  Dickens, 
and  could  be  fully  as  quaint  or  unusual  as  Defoe.  Frank- 
lin- was  the  great  starter  of  things,  as  witness  his  inau- 
guration in  Philadelphia  of  hospitals,  street  paving,  street 
lamps,  circulating  libraries,  and  a  university.  He  was  a 
politician  and  a  diplomat,  a  philosopher  and  a  profound 
investigator.  His  style  of  writing  was  delightfully  sim- 
ple, direct,  and  convincing.  And,  besides  that,  he  was  a 
century  ahead  of  his  time  in  realizing  the  value  of  a  news- 
paper cartoon.  Better  than  any  of  the  others  here  men- 
tioned, Franklin  would  fit  into  the  present  materialistic 
age.  For  him  who  wrote  the  King  of  Prussia  Edict, 
what  a  mine  unfathomable  would  be  the  American  Con- 
gress ! 

Which  seems  to  us  to  be  making  out  a  rather 
good  case  for  Ben.  A  Denver  celebrator  of  Ed- 
gar Allan  Poe  says  he  had  an  analytic  mind, 
clear  thought,  comprehension  of  the  use  and 
meaning  of  words,  and  sympathy  with  his  fel- 
low man ;  but,  says  the  ironic  observer  of  our  pro- 
fession, "perhaps  these  are  not  valuable  editorial 
qualities." 


[180] 


THE     PRESS 


A   GLOBE    TROTTER 

FULL  of  years  and  honors,  our  old  friend  the 
Paragraph  from  Siam  has  girdled  the  globe 
again,  turning  up  the  other  day,  apparently  as 
fresh  and  young  as  ever,  in  New  York  City. 
The  "Times,"  in  the  course  of  its  duty  to  publish 
"all  the  news  that's  fit  to  print,"  solemnly  greeted 
him  as  a  stranger  and  announced  his  arrival  in  an 
editorial.  Supposedly,  the  old  boy  then  took  up 
his  journey  westward.  As  we  recall  it,  this  is  the 
Siamese  humorist's  third  circuit  of  the  planet; 
and  we  have  a  dim  recollection  that  when  he 
dropped  into  town  the  time  before  he  announced 
himself  as  from  India.  Anyway  we  wish  him 
Godspeed  and  long  life.  May  he  continue  to 
make  countless  millions  laugh!  One  warning, 
though — he  oughtn't  to  attempt  to  stop  at  Kan- 
sas City,  where  he  has  almost  worn  out  his  wel- 
come. In  the  office  of  the  "Star,"  in  the  course 
of  a  single  year,  he  turned  up  three  times — once 
on  the  first  page;  once  on  the  editorial  page; 
once  in  a  Sunday  issue.  No  exchange  editor  can 
resist  the  appeal  of  this  paragraph  and  its  brief 
note  of  introduction : 

ENGLISH  AS   SHE   IS  WROTE 

We  have  received  a  copy  of  the  following  announcement 
in  a  newspaper  published  in  Siam: 

The  news  of  English  we  tell  the  latest.     Writ  in  per- 
[181] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMABKS 

fectly  style  and  most  earliest.  Do  a  murder  commit,  we 
hear  of  and  tell  it.  Do  a  mighty  chief  die,  we  publish  it, 
and  in  borders  of  sombre.  Staff  and  each  one  been  col- 
lege, and  write  like  the  Kipling  and  the  Dickens.  We 
circle  every  town  and  extortionate  not  for  advertisements. 
Buy  it     Buy  it. 


FOR   THE   FARMER 

TO  the  desk  of  the  writer  of  this  paragraph 
there  comes  jn  the  course  of  a  month  some- 
thing more  than  a  ton  of  printed  matter.  Among 
the  few  periodicals  which  command  friendly  and 
interested  reading  is  the  "Farm  Journal,"  pub- 
lished by  Wilmer  Atkinson  Company  of  Phila- 
delphia. It  has  old-fashioned  charm,  sincerity, 
piquancy,  occasionally  a  militant  sword  for  fraud 
and  chicanery,  and  throughout  an  atmosphere 
which  breathes  the  desire  of  service  to  its  readers. 
Its  charm  starts  with  its  title  piece  at  the  head  of 
the  first  page,  an  old-fashioned  stone  farmhouse 
of  the  kind  that  is  common  in  the  Quaker  and 
Pennsylvania  Dutch  parts  of  Pennsylvania,  sur- 
rounded by  little  pictures  of  typical  farm  life :  a 
mother  and  two  daughters  making  pies  in  a  farm 
kitchen,  a  boy  bringing  eggs,  a  stalk  of  corn,  and 
some  climbing  roses.  About  the  first  printed 
matter  in  every  issue  of  the  paper  is  this  standing 
notice : 

[182] 


THE     PKESS 


FAIR   PLAY 

We  believe,  through  careful  inquiry,  that  all  the  adver- 
tisements in  this  paper  are  signed  by  trustworthy  persons, 
and,  to  prove  our  faith  by  works,  we  will  make  good  to 
actual  subscribers  any  loss  sustained  by  trusting  adver- 
tisers who  prove  to  be  deliberate  swindlers.  Rogues  shall 
not  ply  their  trade  at  the  expense  of  our  subscribers,  who 
are  our  friends,  through  the  medium  of  these  col- 
umns. .  .  . 

This  notice  has  appeared  in  every  issue  of  the 
"Farm  Journal"  since  1880.  We  think  it  ante- 
dates by  twenty  years  the  movement  for  clean 
advertising  in  periodicals  generally.  When  this 
guarantee  first  appeared  in  the  "Farm  Journal" 
many  farm  papers  were  primarily  vehicles  for 
the  purpose  of  helping  swindlers  cheat  the 
farmer.  The  "Farm  Journal"  has  kept  a  charm- 
ing and  attractive  old-time  quality  and  appear- 
ance, while  it  has  adapted  itself  to  all  that  is  use- 
ful in  the  modern  science  of  agriculture.  We 
know  no  publication  so  sure  to  inspire  and  in- 
struct any  person  with  a  real  affection  for  the 
soil  as  the  "Farm  Journal." 


WANTED:  A  MIRACLE 

TWO  or  three  Frenchman  wrote  years  ago  a 
a  novel  founded  on  this  idea :    Christ  re- 
turns to  earth  and  visits  Paris.    His  personality 

[183] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

has  a  tremendous  influence  upon  the  population, 
and  various  modern  miracles  are  worked,  notably 
in  journalism.  Newspapers  crowded  with  news 
and  advertisements  appear  next  morning  almost 
blank,  for  every  lie  contained  in  them  has  miracu- 
lously faded  into  blank  paper.  What  would  hap- 
pen if  a  miracle  of  this  sort  occurred  in  Tacoma, 
Wash.,  and  what  would  be  left  of  the  Tacoma 
"Daily  News"  ?  A  reader  of  ours  out  there  sends 
us  a  marked  copy  containing  thirty-four  patent- 
medicine  advertisements,  many  of  them  making 
ridiculously  excessive  claims.  Incidentally,  it  is 
a  striking  feature  of  the  present  day  reaction 
against  patent-medicine  fakery  that  it  is  the 
readers  of  newspapers  who  do  the  protesting 
against  these  advertisements.  When  will  erring 
publishers  realize  that  it  pays  to  be  good? 


THE   REPORTER 

TUGGED  by  some  centripetal  force  to  wher- 
ever there  is  a  clash  of  human  passions,  he 
is  always  "on  the  spot."  Unlike  his  brother,  the 
novelist,  who  fashions  out  of  the  furnace  of  his 
mind  at  painstaking  intervals  some  finely  mod- 
eled bit  of  porcelain,  the  furnace  of  this  man's 
soul  is  always  at  full  draft.  Into  it  is  flung  day 
by  day  all  the  inflammable  stuff  of  life — the 
mixed  ingredients  of  heroism,  murder,  revolu- 

[184] 


THE     PRESS 


tion,  passionate  love.  And  steadily,  inexorably, 
it  is  poured  out  again,  uncritical  of  itself,  slag 
and  ore,  half  drivel  and  half  literature.  The  rec- 
ompense he  works  for  is  to  have  his  fellow  work- 
ers say  "Good  story."  His  only  critic  is  "the 
desk."  To-day,  yesterday's  "good  story"  is  light- 
ing the  morning  fire  in  a  thousand  tenements. 
Anonymity,  which  guards  him  from  self-con- 
sciousness, stands  also  mockingly  between  him 
and  fame.  He  snatches  his  friendships  like  his 
meals,  as  stokers  must  strike  up  their  friendships 
between  shifts  when  the  Mauretania  is  "out  for  a 
record."  Yet  there  is  no  freemasonry  like  his. 
From  behind  the  scenes  he  makes  the  puppets  of 
the  world's  stage  dance  for  us.  But  we  can  sus- 
pect his  smile,  as  he  surveys  our  antics,  to  be 
something  between  pity  and  contempt. 


[185] 


XI 

WE    GO   TO   THE    COUNTRY 

THE    COMING   OF    SPRING 

JOHN  BURROUGHS  is  seventy-some- 
thing years  old,  God  bless  him,  but  when  a 
man  has  passed  seventy-five  the  years  don't 
really  signify.  One  is  grateful  to  John  Bub- 
boughs  for  a  great  many  things ;  one  of  them  is 
the  wholly  unaffected  love  for  nature  and  his  fel- 
low men  that  he  has  proved  during  all  these  years. 
Opening  one  of  his  books  the  other  day  (it  hap- 
pened to  be  called  "A  Year  in  the  Fields")  we 
found  it  asking  the  question:  "From  what  fact 
or  event  shall  one  really  date  the  beginning  of 
spring?"    And  then  one  finds  the  answer: 

The  little  piping  frog  usually  furnishes  a  good  starting 
point.  One  spring  I  heard  the  first  note  on  the  6th  of 
April;  the  next  on  the  27th  of  February;  but,  in  reality, 
the  latter  season  was  only  two  weeks  earlier  than  the 
former.  When  the  bees  carry  in  their  first  pollen,  one 
would  think  spring  had  come.  Yet  this  fact  does  not 
always  correspond  with  the  real  stage  of  the  season.  Be- 
fore there  is  any  bloom  anywhere,  bees  will  bring  pollen 
to  the  hive.     Where  do  they  get  it? 

[186] 


WE     GO     TO     THE     COUNTRY 

The  coming  of  spring  is  indicated  to  us  in 
more  ways  than  one — in  city  or  country.  For 
instance,  there  is  that  yearning  we  have  to  cut 
loose  and  desert  the  ship  of  state  and  the  mar- 
kets and  the  magazine  office  and  to  spend  our 
days  afield.  Sometimes  we  yield  to  that  instinct 
— and  break  off  in  what  is  really  only  the  middle 
of  the  editorial  paragraph. 


THE    ANCIENT    CALL 

RESERVOIRS  of  happiness  surround  us 
on  every  hand.  In  their  totality  they  make 
up  the  sum  and  ocean  of  Nature  and  natural 
beauty.  But  to  reach  us  they  must  have  chan- 
nels through  which  to  flow,  and  the  only  pos- 
sible channels  are  the  feeling  for  them  and  the 
love  in  our  hearts.  Every  spring  and  summer 
the  Earth,  that  divine  mother,  pours  out  anew 
her  lavish  affection  for  us,  her  poor  strayed  crea- 
tures, maddened  by  the  pursuit  of  unrealities, 
herded  within  walls,  suffocating,  ill  at  ease,  hag- 
gard with  petty  cares.  She  calls  and  beckons 
and  draws  us,  but,  like  foolish  children,  perverse 
and  untractable,  we  hide  and  answer  not  her  call. 
Every  tree,  every  leaf  and  tendril  and  blade  of 
grass,  brings  us  her  message  of  healing  and 
wholeness,  but  we  heed  not  the  messengers. 

[187] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

The  ends  of  our  endeavor 

Are  wealth  and  fame, 
Yet  in  the  still  Forever 

We're  one  and  all  the  same.  .  .  . 

Our  arguments  disputing, 

The  universal  Pan 
Still  wanders  fluting — fluting — 

Fluting  to  maid  and  man. 

Henley  knew  that  ancient  call,  and  the  prose 
poet,  Algernon  Blackwood,  in  his  wonderful 
book,  "The  Centaur,"  is  no  less  clear  upon  the 
immemorial  legendary  kinship  between  the  earth 
and  man :  "The  strength  and  dignity  of  the  trees 
he  drew  into  himself;  the  power  of  the  wind  was 
his ;  with  his  unwearied  feet  ran  all  the  sweet  and 
facile  swiftness  of  the  rivulets,  and  in  his 
thoughts  the  graciousness  of  flowers,  the  wavy 
softness  of  the  grass,  the  peace  of  open  spaces, 
and  the  calm  of  the  vast  sky."  All  mankind 
yearns  for  that  peace  and  that  at-one-ment,  and 
every  summer  is  a  crusade  of  Nature  to  bring 
more  happy  converts  to  her  sheltering  fold. 


BIRDS    WE    HAVEN'T   KNOWN 

JOHN  MUIR,it  seems — and  Colonel  Roose- 
velt so  reports  it — "was  not  interested  in  the 
small  things  of  nature  unless  they  were  unusually 

[188] 


WE     GO     TO    THE     COUNTRY 

conspicuous.  Mountains,  cliffs,  and  trees  ap- 
pealed to  him  tremendously,  but  birds  did  not 
unless  they  possessed  some  very  peculiar  and  in- 
teresting as  well  as  conspicuous  traits."  One 
night,  when  they  were  camping  in  a  grove  of 
giant  sequoias  and  the  Colonel  asked  him  about 
some  birds  singing  near  by,  he  was  surprised  to 
find  that  the  naturalist  wasn't  listening  and 
didn't  know  anything  about  them.  A  long  sigh 
of  relief  and  three  times  three  for  John  Mum! 
He  could  sit  on  a  solemn  summer  evening  at  the 
foot  of  a  giant  sequoia,  looking  down  on  time  as 
it  had  looked  down  on  the  sierras  since  burning 
Sappho  loved  and  sung,  and  not  insist  on  know- 
ing whether  some  stray  chittering  in  the  bushes 
came  from  a  goose-billed  flea  catcher  or  six-toed 
Robinson  sparrow  No.  3.  Far  be  it  from  us  to 
suggest  that  to  science  one  thing  is  not  as  "im- 
portant" as  another.  The  habit  of  repeating,  in 
the  most  untoward  circumstances,  the  names  of 
all  the  birds  conversing  in  the  neighborhood  is  a 
harmless  enough  pedantry.  Yet  we  can't  help 
feeling  that  our  bird  sharks  might  well  read  an 
article  by  M.  Rene  Doumic  in  which  he  de- 
mands a  return  to  the  French  idea  of  culture,  and 
contrasts  what  he  calls  the  German  habit  of  ac- 
cumulating facts  with  the  French  insistence,  in 
addition,  on  something  that  will  nourish  sensi- 
bility and  taste.  To  be  a  nature  "lover"  a  man 
must,  after  all,  do  a  little  something  more  than 

[189] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

merely  ring  up  facts  as  they  go  by,  as  a  watch- 
man at  closing  time  rings  up  the  names  of  the 
employees  hurrying  past  him  out  into  their  real 
lives. 


THE    HEN    OF    TO-DAY 

NO  longer  is  the  hen  a  straggler  on  society's 
fringe;  her  intensive  culture  is  full  of  in- 
terest— or  shall  we  say  profits?  If  she  cannot  do 
better  than  seventy  eggs  a  year  (which  is  per- 
haps about  what  the  farmer's  hen  has  averaged 
— without  a  college  education ) ,  it  is  into  the  pot 
"for  hers."  Evolution  has  labored  in  the  making 
of  a  feathered  lady  like  C  521,  the  Oregon  Ex- 
periment Station's  triumph,  with  her  world  rec- 
ord of  303  eggs  in  365  days.  In  this  process  all 
our  modern  words  come  into  play :  heredity,  en- 
vironment, survival  of  the  fittest,  eugenics.  But 
it  is  a  case  of  factory  development  as  well  as  race 
development,  for  the  hen  of  to-day  is  above  all 
a  delicately  organized  machine,  speeded  up  under 
scientific  management.  No  more  is  the  cry  for 
show  points  and  purity  of  strain.  The  champion 
of  them  all  is  a  mongrel — seven-eighths  Leghorn 
and  one-eighth  Plymouth  Rock.  It  is  the  egg 
that  counts,  and  egg-laying  contests  at  the  ex- 
periment station  have  proved  that  fine  feathers 
don't  make  the  finest  bird,  nor  yet  does  the  proper 

[190] 


WE     GO     TO     THE     COUNTRY 

set  of  a  rose  comb  or  the  correct  tail  carriage 
fix  productivity.  Poultry  houses  are  no  longer 
heated.  We  have  the  outdoor  school  for  the  su- 
pergirl  at  Bryn  Mawr  and  like  treatment  for  the 
Oregon  superhen.  In  these  costly  days  the  fabled 
hen  which  lays  an  egg  a  day  is  second  cousin  to 
the  goose  that  laid  the  egg  of  gold. 


GREEN    THINGS    GROWING 

THE  tulips  ought  to  be  in  bloom  now  in 
Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul,  and  that  is  a 
true  sign  that  spring  has  conquered  over  our  en- 
tire land.  The  roses  were  by  long  ago  in  Cali- 
fornia and  in  Dixie,  and  it  is  some  time  now 
since  the  shy  arbutus  lit  New  England's  wooded 
corners  into  beauty;  but  one  still  saw  winter's 
backward  threat  over  those  flatlands  high  under 
the  northern  stars.  It  needed  the  bright  ban- 
ners of  the  tulip  to  show  that  old  Boreas  is  dis- 
armed at  last.  Isn't  there  an  old  saying  about 
planting  corn  when  the  new  oak  leaf  is  as  large 
as  a  squirrel's  ear?  That  ought  to  give  even  the 
most  confirmed  city  dweller  an  excuse  for  get- 
ting out  among  the  braveries  of  the  newly  bud- 
ded woods.  There  is  nothing  so  beautiful  for 
those  who  will  see  it  as  the  delicate  green  miracle 
of  these  same  new  leaves,  unless  perhaps  it  is  the 
fairy  sickle  of  the  new  moon  hanging  low  in  skies 

[191] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

cleared  by  recent  rain.  Even  in  a  hard  city  street 
the  bourgeoning  of  just  one  tree  is  like  a  benedic- 
tion. He  was  a  true  poet  (whoever  he  was) 
who  said  something  to  the  general  effect  that 
"the  origin  and  springhead,  as  it  were,  of  all 
music  is  the  very  pleasant  sound  that  the  trees  of 
the  forest  do  make  as  they  grow."  Get  out 
among  them  now  and  see  what  a  fair  world  it  is 
when  blessed  by  the  recurring  loveliness  of 
spring.  Surely  the  eternal  lesson  of  love  and  life 
is  now  made  plain. 


PATTER    OF   RAIN 

OUR  umbrella  hand  is  getting  calloused 
again;  the  score  board  detains  no  office 
boys;  outdoor  games  and  plays  are  at  a  hoarse 
discount,  and  all  our  golfing  friends  are  snuffling 
in  their  speech.  Since  it  rained  on  this  or  that 
saint's  day,  must  it  rain  forty  other  days  and 
nights?  The  talk  one  hears  about  the  war  is 
gloomier  for  these  lowering  clouds  and  fiercer 
for  the  flashes  that  split  them.  No  wonder  the 
wise  fathers  put  their  elections  in  the  fall,  when 
crops  are  gathered  and  roads  are  sometimes  dry. 
No  administration  that  ever  blessed  our  country 
could  stand  up  for  a  spring  campaign  under  the 
burden  of  a  long  rain.  Class  hatred  is  fostered 
by  these  swishing  automobiles  which  know  not 

[192] 


WE    GO    TO    THE    COUNTEY 

the  just  from  the  unjust.  This  is  the  real  sort 
of  season  for  hibernating*.  The  cold  of  winter 
braces  the  nerves  and  bites  one  into  action,  but 
just  try  to  wake  a  child  in  time  for  early  break- 
fast some  warm-misted  morning  and  note  the 
difference — that  is,  if  you  get  up  early  enough 
yourself.  There's  a  real  subject  for  debate  in 
the  question  whether  a  lazy  summer  rain  is 
drowsier  than  bees  in  clover.  It  should  be 
argued  before  a  jury  of  dormice  and  the  victor 
crowned  with  blue  corn-flowers  drooping  full  of 
dew.  With  these  rain  wreaths  down  the  sky, 
and  the  greenness  of  growth  everywhere,  and  the 
soft  air's  healing  touch  upon  it — surely  there  is 
gentleness  now  at  the  very  heart  of  things,  and 
summer  herself  is  smiling  upon  us  through  the 
clouds. 


MOWING   TIME 

HAYING  is  the  kiddies'  carnival  from  the 
day  the  farmer  whets  the  knives  of  his 
mowing  machine  till  the  barn  door  slides  shut 
on  the  last  load.  First  of  all,  the  mowing  ma- 
chine sings  merrily  in  its  meadow-encircling  orbit. 
The  scythe  is  less  used  nowadays,  so  that  the  un- 
mistakable slither  of  the  whetstone  against  the 
slender  blade  is  not  so  often  heard — picked  out 
against  the  summer  hush.    Without  the  scythe 

[193] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

there  is  less  reason  to  seek  the  pail  of  oatmeal 
and  water  which  stands  in  the  shade  at  the  edge 
of  the  field.  After  the  grass  is  cut  comes  the 
tedder  to  do  its  work  with  grasshopper  joints  and 
grasshopper  kick.  Next  the  big  rake  attends  to 
the  long  windrows.  Then  come  larks  for  the  kid- 
dies. None  of  the  poets  of  new-mown  hay  have 
more  than  hinted  at  the  actual  joys  of  romping 
in  it.  Last  of  all  comes  the  making  of  the  load, 
a  scientific  process.  If  you  are  lucky,  you  get 
a  ride  to  the  barn,  swaying  high  in  air  and  forc- 
ing all  other  vehicles  into  the  ditch.  And  finally 
— the  unloading.  In  the  well-filled  mows  the 
hay  pricks  your  bare  legs  and  grasshoppers  some- 
how work  in  under  your  shirt.  But  you  make 
caves  and  have  grand  games  of  hide  'n'  seek  none 
the  less.  Haying  is  a  less  time-consuming  en- 
terprise than  of  old,  but  the  modern  improve- 
ments have  not  impaired  its  old-time  joys  for 
youth. 


THE   "VALUE"    OF   CORN 

IN  a  recent  number  we  tried  to  make  the  point 
that  a  short  corn  crop  means  less  food.  The 
Fort  Worth  (Tex.)  "Record"  interprets  this  as 
an  attack  on  the  farmers  because  they  do  not  live 
within  the  city  limits!  Now,  we  are  perfectly 
willing  to  see  the  food  growers  get  every  proper 

[194] 


WE    GO    TO     THE     COUNTRY 

advantage  out  of  the  working  of  the  law  of  sup- 
ply and  demand.  Collier's  is  disposed  to  insist 
that  they  be  not  deprived  of  their  hard-earned 
market  prices  by  various  modern  systems  of  food 
adulteration  and  of  market  manipulation.  Jus- 
tice must  and  will  be  done  in  these  things.  The 
last  proposition  we  would  ever  think  of  urging 
or  even  suggesting  is  that  the  farmer  "cheerfully 
give  to  the  nonproducing  classes  the  full  benefit 
of  all  good  seasons."  This  absurdity  is  the  sole 
product  of  the  Fort  Worth  "Record"  (probably 
due  to  mental  drought),  and  we  must  refuse  all 
credit  for  it.  Our  point  was  and  is  solely  this: 
That  less  food  means  less  to  eat ;  that  this  condi- 
tion is  a  national  misfortune,  and  that  to  gloss  it 
over  by  talking  about  "value"  is  to  exhibit  that 
old  weakness  in  thinking  which  mistakes  dollar 
marks  for  things.  There  was  once  a  great  deal  of 
this  abroad,  even  in  Texas,  in  the  old  fiat-money 
days.  As  all  good  Texans  cannot  be  helping  Mr. 
Bubleson  run  the  post  office,  it  is  worth  while 
that  some  of  them  think  clearly,  and  this  rejoin- 
der is  printed  merely  to  keep  the  record  straight 
— if  possible.  We  hardly  dare  hope  that  the  corn 
will  be  acknowledged. 


[195] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 


THE    OLD-TIME    GARDEN 

ARE  the  times  grown  too  feverish  to  admit 
of  our  still  having  an  old-fashioned  garden? 
Of  course  there  is  no  direct  "civic  uplift"  in 
hollyhocks;  sweet  William  doesn't  help  to  solve 
the  "social  evil";  the  ragged  sailor  and  the  mil- 
lennium aren't  in  any  way  allied.  And  yet  the 
riot  of  color — at  least  we  thought  it  riotous  till 
the  era  of  pointillism  dawned — is  still  a  pleasant 
memory,  and  at  this  time  of  year  one  wishes  he 
had  planted  more  seed  last  July  and  August. 
Moreover,  we  have  Mrs.  Charlotte  Perkins 
Gilman's  word  for  it  that  "a  child  needs  grass 
as  much  as  it  needs  a  bed" — and  if  the  child  of 
the  "larger  feminism"  needs  grass,  perhaps  the 
grown-up  is  entitled  to  a  few  flowers.  Already 
it  is  time,  in  this  latitude,  to  think  about  Canter- 
bury bells  and  the  annual  poppies  and  pansies. 
May  is  soon  enough  for  your  larkspur — without 
whose  gay  blue  spikes  the  garden  would  be  tame 
indeed.  Yes,  in  spite  of  the  risk  of  seeming  reac- 
tionary, we  unqualifiedly  declare  in  favor  of  the 
old-fashioned  garden. 


[196] 


WE     GO     TO     THE     COUNTRY 


IN    PRAISE    OF   WEEDS 

SENTIMENTALITY  about  flowers  is  an 
old  story,  but  sentimentality  about  weeds  is, 
one  may  say — speaking  as  an  agriculturist — a 
more  serious  matter.  And  yet  look  at  that  de- 
lightful chapter  in  that  delightful  book,  "A 
Year  in  the  Fields,"  by  John  Burroughs: 

One  is  tempted  to  say  that  the  most  human  plants,  after 
all,  are  the  weeds.  How  they  cling  to  man  and  follow  him 
around  the  world,  and  spring  up  wherever  he  sets  his  foot! 
Some  of  them  are  so  domestic  and  familiar,  and  so  harm- 
less withal,  that  one  comes  to  regard  them  with  positive 
affection.  Motherwort,  catnip,  plaintain,  tansy,  wild  mus- 
tard— what  a  homely  human  look  they  have!  Your  smart 
new  place  will  wait  long  before  they  draw  near  it.  Our 
knotgrass,  that  carpets  every  old  dooryard,  and  fringes 
every  walk,  and  softens  every  path  that  knows  the  feet  of 
children,  or  that  leads  to  the  spring,  or  to  the  garden,  or 
to  the  barn,  how  kindly  one  comes  to  look  upon  it!  .  .  . 
Weeds  are  Nature's  makeshift.  She  rejoices  in  the  grass 
and  the  grain,  but  when  these  fail  to  cover  her  nakedness 
she  resorts  to  weeds.  It  is  in  her  plan,  or  a  part  of  her 
economy,  to  keep  the  ground  constantly  covered  with  vege- 
tation of  some  sort,  and  she  has  layer  upon  layer  of  seeds 
in  the  soil  for  this  purpose.  .  .  .  The  soil  is  a  storehouse. 

Dipping  into  the  treatises  of  CATO'and  Varro, 
in  the  translation  made  by  "A  Virginia  Farmer" 
under  the  title  "Roman  Farm  Management,"  we 
find,  if  not  the  counterpart  of  this  passage  by 

[197] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

John  Burroughs,  at  least  ample  evidence  that 
the  ancient  Romans  knew  full  well  the  value  of 
what  we  used  to  call  "waste  material."  Our 
farm  journals  nowadays  talk  a  good  deal  about 
the  conservation  of  certain  weeds  or,  rather,  their 
utilization  as  Nature's  insurance  against  worn-out 
lands.  To  quote  one  of  John  Burroughs's  con- 
temporaries, Mr.  E.  P.  Powell: 

The  Roman  farmer  composted  everything,  manipulated 
its  fermentation,  and  saved  every  ounce  of  the  result  as 
plant  food.  It  is  most  curious  to  find  Varro  in  the  forty- 
second  chapter  discussing  very  familiarly  that  recent  dis- 
covery in  American  farming,  alfalfa.  We  have  to  console 
ourselves  that  they  did  not  know  what  we  know  about 
bacteria. 

After  all,  Mr.  Burroughs's  kind  words  for 
the  weeds  are  not  all  sentiment. 


THE    COUNTRY    BOY'S    CREED 

WE  came  upon  it  first  in  the  Greenwood 
(Miss.)  "Commonwealth."  But  no 
source  was  given.  We  traced  it,  however,  to  its 
publication  in  the  "Progressive  Farmer"  of 
Memphis,  Tenn.  That  is  as  far  as  we  have  got, 
although  a  query  to  that  paper  brings  the  infor- 
mation that  very  likely  the  "Creed"  was  first 

[198] 


WE    GO     TO     THE     COUNTRY 

— ■— —  i 

used  by  a  Boys'  Corn  Club  in  Virginia  and  was 
later  adopted  by  all  the  Corn  Clubs  in  that  State. 
It  would  give  us  real  pleasure  to  learn  where 
and  how  this  expressive  statement  of  an  ideal 
crystallized  into  words.  Perhaps  by  this  time 
you  are  curious  to  read  it  for  yourself: 

I  believe  that  the  country  which  God  made  is  more  beau- 
tiful than  the  city  which  man  made;  that  life  out  of  doors 
and  in  touch  with  the  earth  is  the  natural  life  of  man.  I 
believe  that  work  with  nature  is  more  inspiring  than  work 
with  the  most  intricate  machinery.  I  believe  that  the  dig- 
nity of  labor  depends  not  on  what  you  do,  but  how  you  do 
it;  that  opportunity  comes  to  a  boy  on  the  farm  as  often 
as  to  a  boy  in  the  city;  that  life  is  larger  and  freer  and 
happier  on  the  farm  than  in  the  town;  that  my  success 
depends  not  upon  my  location,  but  upon  myself;  not  upon 
my  dreams,  but  upon  what  I  actually  do;  not  upon  luck, 
but  upon  pluck.  I  believe  in  working  when  you  work,  and 
in  playing  when  you  play,  and  in  giving  and  demanding  a 
square  deal  in  every  act  of  life. 

"Iron  sharpeneth  iron."  Who  knows  a  more 
succinct  phrasing  of  the  aspiration  which  this 
country  needs  through  all  its  length  and  breadth  ? 


AUTUMN 

AUTUMN"  is  the  poet's  season.    Spring  is  it- 
self poetry:  youth  and  running  sap  and 
first  blossoming.    When  all  creation  is  mating, 

[199] 


NATIONAL    FLOODM  ARKS 

what  chance  has  the  written  word?  Summer  is 
too  idle  a  season  for  poetry,  or  too  full  of  actual 
enjoyments.  Poetry  means  less  than  sunlight. 
And  winter  is  too  cold  for  verse,  unless  it  he  verse 
in  a  brisk  measure,  that  twinkles  its  feet  on  the 
double-quick  to  hurry  circulation.  Autumn  is 
poetry's  proper  season — partly  because  of  its 
dazzling  whites,  like  winter's,  or  vibrant  heat,  like 
summer's,  or  incorrigible  heedless  youth,  like 
spring's;  also  because  fall  is  the  season  of  tem- 
pered colors  and  harmonized  compositions.  The 
Louisville  poet,  Madison  Cawein,  paints  the 
autumn  scene: 

The  gray  decides;  and  brown 
Dim  golds  and  drabs  in  dulling  green  express 
Themselves  and  redden  as  the  year  goes  down. 
Sadder  the  fields  where,  thrusting  hoary  high 
Their  tasseled  heads,  the  Lear-like  cornstalks  die, 
And,  Falstaff-like,  buff-bellied  pumpkins  lie. 

The  very  melancholy  of  fall  time — a  gentle  per- 
vasive melancholy  that  enriches  these  days  of  the 
old  year  nobly  dying — makes  for  poetry : 

Deepening  with  tenderness, 
Sadder  the  blue  of  hills  that  lounge  along 
The  lonesome  West;  sadder  the  song 
Of  the  wild  redbird  in  the  leafage  yellow. 
Deeper  and  dreamier,  aye! 
Than  woods  or  waters,  leans  the  languid  sky 
Above  lone  orchards  where  the  cider  press 
Drips,  and  the  russets  mellow. 
[200] 


WE    GO    TO    THE    COUNTRY 

Autumn  is  a  time  of  splendid  reminiscence  and 
chastened  prophecy. 


OCTOBER 

ONE  of  our  Philadelphia  friends  finds  fault 
with  our  views  on  Autumn.  "Later,  in  the 
fall,  you  may  be  as  melancholy  as  you  like," 
he  writes,  "but  there's  nothing  blue  about  Octo- 
ber but  the  sky.  Do  you  know  Tom  Daly's 
poems? 

Come,  forsake  your  city  street! 
Come  to  God's  own  fields  and  meet 

October. 
Not  the  lean,  unkempt,  and  brown 
Counterfeit  that  haunts  the  town, 
Pointing,  like  a  thing  of  gloom, 
At  dead  Summer  in  her  tomb; 
Reading  in  each  fallen  leaf 
Nothing  but  regret  and  grief. 
Come  out,  where,  beneath  the  blue, 
You  may  frolic  with  the  true 

October. 

This  is  the  season,  not  for  melancholy  in  front  of 
a  smoky  wood  fire,  but  for  profitable  exercise. 
Now,  if  ever,  come  walking  days.    Try  it !" 

We  mean  to.  We  have  begun  already;  it  was 
moonlight  a  few  evenings  ago,  and  we  walked 
briskly  after  dinner.  We  took  a  collie  along  for 
company,  and  both  of  us  enjoyed  the  evening, 
and  all  the  fresh  country  odors  it  somehow  drew 

[201] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEK8 

from  soil  and  turf  and  shrubbery.  Our  Phila- 
delphia correspondent  quotes  from  T.  A.  Daly — 
a  fellow  townsman  to  be  proud  of.  We  like  him 
best  in  his  Italian- American  verses,  that  one 
may  compare  with  Deummond's  French-Cana- 
dian ballads  without  a  blush  or  an  apology.  We 
like  Daly's  Italians  in  America  better  than  his 
straight  Yankee  or  Hibernian,  though  the  latter 
was  lately  praised  in  no  measured  terms  by  Mrs. 
Hinkson,  Katheeine  Tynan  that  was.  To  our 
mind,  good  Padre  Angelo  can  never  be  matched 
by  Father  Dan  O'M alley  or  "his  River ence, 
Father  O'Flanigan,"  while  "Mia  Carlotta"  and 
"Between  Two  Loves,"  for  tenderness  and  hu- 
mor, outdo  anything  of  Daly's  in  Irish  dialect. 
Yet  the  poet  is  the  best  of  Irishmen  as  well  as 
the  best  of  Americans,  and  if  you  don't  know  him 
you  have  only  to  hunt  up  his  "Carmina"  and 
"Canzoni."  October  is  as  good  a  month  as  any 
to  enjoy  Tom  Daly  and  cross-country  walking. 


SOUTHWARD   AGAIN 

OF  all  summer  tourists  the  most  wonderful 
are  the  birds.  And  at  this  season  some  of 
them  are  packing  up  and  starting  south  again — 
so  quietly  that  one  is  unaware.  For  three  and  a 
half  months,  speaking  roughly,  they  are  saying 
their  good-bys  to  the  North ;  many  of  them  have 

[202] 


WE    GO     TO    THE     COUNTRY 

had  a  vacation  of  only  six  weeks,  for  which  some 
will  have  traveled  15,000  miles.  For  centuries, 
for  eras,  man  has  witnessed  the  flight  of  birds, 
their  invasion  of  the  frozen  North  in  all  the  gay- 
ness  of  bright  feathers  and  wooing  time;  their 
melancholy  retreat  before  a  winter  unannounced. 
Yet  few  of  us  can  speak  on  the  subject  with 
much  authority. 

Why  does  the  insect  feeder  take  his  flight  in 
August,  when  it  is  still  warm  enough  to  suit 
everyone  and  the  air  is  full  of  dinner?  How  high 
does  the  golden  plover  fly,  and  why  does  the 
warbler  lose  his  head  in  approaching  the  lights  of 
the  city?  By  day  and  by  night  the  birds'  exodus 
is  a  marvel ;  but  at  night  it  is  most  mysterious.  It 
is  not  alone  feathered  citizens  fearing  the  hawk 
tribe  that  pursue  night  travel  at  the  risk  of  life. 
Why?  Some  species  have  organized  their  retreat 
on  the  most  systematic  plan;  others  are  impres- 
sionists, and  mix  with  other  kinds  of  fowl,  travel- 
ing as  the  spirit  moves,  covering  no  great  dis- 
tance at  a  time.  We  all  know  how  the  blackbirds 
and  crows  meet  and  swing  off  in  troops,  starting 
in  August  and  attaining  great  numbers  in  Sep- 
tember flight.  Some  birds  certainly  rise  to  a 
height  of  four  or  five  miles  on  their  pilgrimage, 
and  the  speed  of  some  is  calculated  at  a  hundred 
miles  an  hour.  Millions  upon  millions  of  birds 
are  in  motion  at  this  time,  or  a  little  later.  The 
loss  of  them  for  a  season  may  in  part  explain  our 
autumn  sadness. 

[203] 


XII 
WE   RELAX 


VACATION   TIME 

TIME  was  when  we  considered  ourselves  ex- 
ceptionally lucky  if  we  could  squeeze  in  a 
summer  holiday  of  two  weeks.  Nowadays 
that  isn't  enough.  Just  now  there  looms  that 
costly  desirability,  the  winter  vacation.  To  bang 
the  cover  down  on  a  hastily  tidied  desk,  to  wave 
good-by  to  town  and  trouble,  to  sail  out  of  one 
of  this  world's  most  beautiful  harbors  into  the 
most  popular  of  oceans — that  is  our  wish.  You 
see,  we  have  been  reading  "tourist  literature." 
Why  did  they  send  it  to  us  ?    Listen  to  this : 

The  twin  S.  S.  Aphrodite  [we've  changed  the  name — 
this  isn't  a  paid  advertisement]  is  THE  ONLY 
STEAMER  on  the  New  York-Bermuda  route  ESPE- 
CIALLY DESIGNED  AND  CONSTRUCTED  FOR 
THAT  SERVICE.  Lovers  find  the  sea  entrancing,  and 
married  folk  renew  their  love-making  under  the  sea's  influ- 
ence. A  double  bottom,  which  enables  water  ballast  to  be 
pumped  out  when  the  vessel  sights  Bermuda,  gives  pas- 
sengers an  opportunity  of  enjoying  one  of  the  most  charm- 
ing features  possible  to  tourists.    They  can  remain  on  the 

[204] 


WE    EEL AX 


ship,  and  from  the  deck  watch  the  navigation  and  maneu- 
vering of  the  steamship  through  the  narrow  channels,  so 
close  between  the  small  islands  that  A  BISCUIT  CAN  BE 
TOSSED  TO  THE  SHORE  from  either  side  of  the  ship, 
while  enjoying  the  greatest  panorama  of  picturesque 
scenery  in  the  world  as  the  ship  enters  the  harbor  of 
Hamilton.  Passengers,  ESPECIALLY  LADIES,  have 
found  it  A  GREAT  CONVENIENCE. 

Why  we  should  want  to  "toss  a  biscuit"  from 
the  deck  we  can't  imagine — we  just  do.  That 
circular  put  it  into  our  head.  And  listen  to  this 
insidious  suggestion: 

The  benefits  and  pleasures  of  a  brief  respite  from  the 
winter's  storms  and  stress  are  so  marked  that  thousands  of 
business  and  professional  men  and  women  seek  every  year 
RENEWED  STRENGTH  AND  ENERGY  in  a  short 
trip  to  the  tropics. 

Nothing  will  do  for  us  now  but  a  voyage  to 
the  land  of  "matchless  beauty  and  boundless 
hospitality"  (transient  rates,  $4  per  day  up- 
ward). Are  not  the  Bermudas  "living  coral 
reefs,  the  existence  of  which  is  due  to  the  prox- 
imity of  the  Gulf  Stream?"  The  islands  are  "not 
mountainous,  but  undulating."  The  landscape 
is  "nowhere  marred  by  squalor  or  dilapidation." 
The  climate  is  "the  most  agreeable  and  equable 
in  the  world."  Hi!  Fetch  our  golf  clubs  and 
tennis  racquet! 

[205] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


LAUGHTER 

A  CORRESPONDENT  of  the  "Saturday 
Review"  holds  laughter  to  be  "always 
vulgar  and  offensive."  With  thoroughgoing 
British  disapproval,  he  quotes  the  stanza: 

Let  us  have  wine  and  women, 

Mirth  and  laughter; 
Lemonade  and  soda  water 

The  day  after. 

"Laughter  is  profane,  in  fact,  where  it  is  not 
ridiculous,"  is  the  absurd  conclusion.  Just  as  if 
wine  were  the  only  laughter  maker !  For  though 
the  empty  laugh  declares  the  vacant  mind,  the 
laugh  of  resonance  bespeaks  the  man  of  health. 
There  is  as  much  difference  between  the  laugh 
which  is  only  a  noisy  discord  and  the  laugh  which 
is  an  explosion  of  the  comic  spirit  as  there  is  be- 
tween a  barroom  joke  and  a  comedy  by  Moliere. 
In  our  modern  sophistication  too  few  of  us  know 
how  to  laugh  at  all.  We  can  only  grin,  giggle, 
or  snicker.  A  hearty  laugh  does  the  body  good, 
and  what  is  really  good  for  the  body  is  generally 
good  for  the  soul  too.  "He  who  laughs,"  said 
Goethe's  mother,  "can  commit  no  deadly  sin." 


[206] 


WE     EEL AX 


TERPSICHOREAN 

EVERY  dance  has  its  day,  passes,  and  is  for- 
gotten. 

.  .  .  Swift  from  shine  to  shade 
The  roaring  generations  flit  and  fade, 

each  capering  to  its  own  special  measure  and  each 
piously  reprehending  the  saltations  of  its  succes- 
sors. Only  the  waltz  eternally  survives,  and  be- 
cause (for  a  guess)  it  has  been  the  most  rhythmic, 
the  most  poetic  of  all  dances.  For  a  like  reason 
the  one  step,  under  some  one  of  its  many  aliases, 
is  here  to  stay.  It  is  a  prospect  which  we  are  un- 
able to  view  with  any  marked  degree  of  horror. 
Doubtless  the  present  innovations,  with  their  pul- 
sating meter,  are  at  times  performed  immodestly. 
But  that  there  is  anything  inherently  evil  in  them, 
one  may,  from  the  side  lines,  doubt.  For  one 
thing,  they  demand  a  sustained  and  considerable 
activity.  Exercise  is  a  powerful  solvent  of  ill 
manners.  More  collars  than  high  resolutions  will 
be  melted,  one  suspects,  and  shirt  bosoms,  rather 
than  moral  principles,  succumb  to  the  lure  of  the 
foot-fretting  tempo.  For  our  part  we  choose  to 
be  optimistic  about  the  turkey  trot,  the  one  step, 
the  tango,  et  id  omne  genus,  holding  that,  in  re- 
spect to  the  light  fantastic  toe,  one  may  still  trip 
without  falling  from  grace. 

[207] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


BREAKING   LOOSE 

OUR  heart  warms  to  that  brakeman  on  a  sub- 
urban train  in  Illinois.  This  brakeman 
revolted  one  day  against  the  tyranny  of  routine. 
Instead  of  walking  through  the  cars  announcing 
the  names  of  the  stations  at  which  the  train  would 
stop  ("Four-forty-seven  for  Lake  Blank;  this 
train  stops  at  Bushberry,  Long  Links,  Putter- 
ville  and  Dawdletown") ,  he  did  it  like  this,  using 
the  proper  official  tone:  "Weather  report  fair 
and  slightly  cooler."  Imagine  the  dramatic  ef- 
fect of  this  commonplace  announcement  on  a  ear- 
ful of  Chicago  commuters!  It  was  as  if  con- 
ductor and  brakeman  had  played  leapfrog  down 
the  aisle,  as  if  the  newsman  had  conjugated  amo, 
amaSj  amat,  instead  of  calling  out  the  evening 
papers  and  Collier's. 

We  never  pulled  just  that  trick,  but  maybe  it 
is  because  we  never  were  a  brakeman. 


WE'RE    OFF! 

THE  flowers  that  bloom  in  the  spring,  tra-la, 
are  showing  up — and  so  are  the  flowers  of 
speech  that  bloom  on  the  sporting  page.  Drama 
and  baseball  demand  collaboration  from  all  the 
seven  arts — as  you  will  see  illustrated  in  that 

[208] 


WE     RELAX 


portion  of  Collier's  which  Grantland  Rice  and 
F.  G.  Cooper  share  on  terms  of  amity.  Rice  has 
a  rival,  however,  for  our  mail  brings  us  from 
Boise,  Idaho,  a  "baseball  sonnet"  by  A.  J. 
Priest  : 


Baseball,  thou  art  my  god;  I  do  adore  thee. 

My  soul  is  thrilled  when  I  see  Johnson  on  the  mound, 
Or  watch  the  runner's  spikes  tear  up  the  ground: 

In  good  sooth  thou  dost  stir  me  unto  ecstasy. 

Impatiently  I  do  await  the  coming  spring, 
For  basketball  but  poorly  fills  the  interim, 
Utterly  failing  to  appease  the  fan's  fond  whim: 

We  do  attend  thee,  baseball;  we  would  crown  thee  king. 

Oh,  Time,  thy  wings  are  leaden.    Come,  make  haste 
And  bring  these  winter  months  unto  their  close. 

Baseball's  the  only  sport  for  my  nice  taste, 
Speed,  Time,  or  I  will  yank  thy  wrinkled  nose. 

Bring  on  King  Baseball,  crowned  the  greatest  of  them  all; 
Bring  on  the  bat,  the  glove,  and  last,  not  least,  the  ball. 

We  are  as  glad  to  print  these  lines  as  theil! 
author  was  to  write  them.  Their  author  is  a 
high-school  boy — one  of  the  ten  million  boys  ex* 
cited  at  this  minute  over  the  new  season.  Wha£ 
future  shall  we  prophesy  for  him?  Will  he  write 
another  "Casey  at  the  Bat,"  or  will  he  live  to  earn 
a  bigger  baseball  salary  than  Tris  Speaker's? 

[209] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 


A   BIT   OF   CONEY   ISLAND 

IT  was  outside  a  show  in  Dreamland  that  you 
met  that  unusual  barker.  He  was  barking 
for  the  last  show  on  the  western  tier — the  one 
next  to  the  artificially  continued  infants.  His 
show  dealt  with  desperadoes.  It  revealed  a  gang 
of  train  robbers,  dressed  in  striped  suits,  and 
doing  an  intricate  lock  step  while  they  sang  Sing 
Sing  chanteys,  such  as  convicts  use  at  tea.  Me- 
lodiously their  voices  rang  out  over  the  thunders 
of  the  scenic  railway  and  the  noise  of  many 
waters  from  the  ever-bubbling  chutes.  There 
were  six  of  these  wild  fellows  who  marked  time 
and  paced  and  halted  in  front  of  the  ten-cent  en- 
trance to  their  own  show.  Then,  with  a  final  roar 
of  the  chorus,  they  would  foot  it  inside.  Calm 
over  the  tumult,  like  Neptune  exalted  over 
stormy  seas,  stood  the  barker  chanting  his  invita- 
tion to  the  ring  of  pleasure  seekers.    He  said : 

This  show  is  worth  your  attention.  After  a  generous 
half  hour  with  these  jolly  convicts,  if  you  will  come  to  me 
and  state  that  the  show  has  failed  to  please  you,  that  it 
lacked  ginger  and  uplift,  I  will  place  one  dime,  ten  cents, 
in  the  palm  of  your  hand. 

The  show  itself  will  exemplify  to  you  how  always  the 
life  of  crime  leads  downward,  how  the  wages  of  sin  is 
death.  It  is  moral.  At  the  same  time,  it  crackles  with 
life  and  action.  First,  you  will  see  these  wicked  men  hold 
up  a  Southern  Pacific  express.     Then  comes  retribution. 

[210] 


WE    RELAX 


They  are  captured  and  clapped  into  prison.  The  next 
scene  is  the  interior  of  the  jail,  where  you  will  hear  them 
singing  their  inimitable  songs.  Hence  comes  their  name 
of  Jail  Birds.  Now  if  you  will  pass  inside — the  perform- 
ance will  begin  in  just  thirty  seconds. 

His  voice  was  rich  and  far-reaching.  But  the 
keen  ear  would  glean  that  it  was  dead  at  the  cen- 
ter. It  sang  out  like  a  spent  arrow — the  calm 
level  flight  of  ennui.  But  never  did  his  auditors 
diminish.  Group  after  group  heard  him  through 
his  languid  invitation.  They  listened  almost  rap- 
turously, and  lingered  after  his  lazily  ringing 
tones  had  died  out  on  the  raucous  air.  Unwil- 
lingly they  passed  on  to  the  impersonal  Babies  at 
the  right  or  the  Rocky  Road  to  Cork  on  the  left 
when  the  compelling  barker  turned  his  back  on 
them  all  and  followed  the  stock  farmer  and  the 
rural  lady  inside.  But  it  wasn't  the  voice  of  the 
man,  or  the  words  of  the  man,  which  threw  a 
strange  spell  over  each  successive  group.  It  was 
his  imperturbable  eye.  It  had  the  farseeing  qual- 
ity which  comes  from  practice  on  long  remote 
horizons — such  far-flung  sight  as  is  the  portion 
of  sailors  and  plainsmen.  It  had  the  fearless 
scorn  of  one  who  could  look  into  the  barrel  of  a 
gun  without  wincing.  He  seemed  to  have  found 
profound  peace  after  a  troubled  journey. 
Surely  here  was  a  man  who  had  killed  his  enemies 
in  a  fair  fight  without  winking,  whose  speech  was 
ironical.    You  wondered  from  what  origins  had 

[211] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAKKS 

come  a  person  so  much  at  home  in  life.  Through 
what  furnace  of  experience  had  he  passed  that  the 
outer  world  seemed  to  him  so  cheap  a  byplay? 


ACROSS  THE  TABLE  FROM  MARSE  HENRY 

THE  high-browed  Boston  "Transcript"  stim- 
ulated a  round-up  on  the  food  question  by 
disrespectfully  defining  potlicker  as  "the  houn' 
dawg's  ambrosia."  This  started  them  all  up 
down  in  Kentucky  till  the  matter  came  to  the 
attention  of  Colonel  Heney  Watteeson  of  the 
"Courier-Journal,"  who  shook  his  mane  and  de- 
livered an  oracle,  of  which  we  can  only  quote  one 
paragraph: 

Real  potlicker,  the  only  variety  worthy  of  discussion,  is 
distilled — preferably  in  an  iron  kettle  over  wood  fire — 
from  hog  jowl  and  wild  greens.  It  gets  from  the  jowl  the 
flavor  of  clover  leaves  and  dew  imparted  to  that  part  of 
the  pig's  anatomy  during  happy  hours  of  grazing  in  rich 
pastures.  There  is  also  a  suggestion  of  the  fragrant  leaves 
of  sassafras  bushes  and  the  nutlike  quality  of  flint  corn. 
The  commingled  essences  of  wild  greens — dandelion 
leaves,  lamb's  quarter,  "pepper  grass,"  and  a  dozen  other 
varieties — with  a  bouquet  added  by  the  penetrant  wood 
smoke  that  envelops  the  pot  in  which  the  greens  caress  the 
jowl,  make  the  true  potlicker  of  the  South  ambrosial  to 
both  the  "houn'  dawg"  and  the  twins. 

That  ought  to  settle  the  men  of  beans  and 
pumpkins.    What  can  a  Bostonian  know  of  food 

[212] 


WE     RELAX 


anyhow,  except  from  travel  and  hearsay?  Who- 
ever yearned  for  the  fleshpots  of  Memorial  Hall, 
or  made  joyous  pilgrimage  to  Washington 
Street's  beaneries  or  to  the  Women's  Educational 
and  Industrial  Union  opposite  the  Common? 
The  food  of  the  South  is  real  eating,  food  for 
men  who  have  been  on  horseback  most  of  the 
day,  while  Boston's  merely  carries  over  the  cor- 
poreal entity  from  one  deep  thought  to  the  next. 
Boston's  sole  contribution  to  the  kitchen  was 
Parker  House  rolls — and  they  are  gone  forever. 
In  the  rich  lands  of  the  West,  delivered  from  the 
tyranny  of  codfish  balls  and  pie,  New  England 
cookery  has  become  worth  while.  But  Boston 
has  a  long  way  to  go  before  pronouncing  verdicts 
in  these  the  higher  arts. 

What  is  the  best  food  region  of  the  United 
States,  and  why?    We  do  not  live  by  ink  alone. 


FOR   THE    GAME'S   ACHE 

TWENTY  years  ago  football  was  a  game. 
To-day  it  is  something  else — a  technique, 
a  show,  a  patriotism,  a  frenzy — what  you  will, 
but  it  is  not  a  game.  At  Princeton,  then,  for 
example,  those  who  could  not  get  on  the  college 
or  class  teams  formed  stray  elevens  of  their  own 
and  played  one  another  or  contended  against 
teams  made  up  of  active  young  fellows  from 

[213]   * 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

near-by  towns.  Some  varsity  material  was  de- 
veloped in  these  encounters,  which  were  kept  up 
through  the  winter  until  baseball  began  in  March. 
These  gladiators  furnished  their  own  clothing, 
were  their  own  coaches  and  trainers,  and  played 
in  the  open  fields  for  sheer  love  of  the  game.  Be 
it  remembered  that  these  were  the  days  when 
Princeton  defeated  Yale  by  the  largest  score 
ever  made  on  the  Blue,  and  that  against  an 
eleven  led  by  the  invincible  Hinkey! 

The  college  student  of  to-day  is  smoother, 
more  urbane,  fonder  of  his  bath  and  his  profes- 
sors, an  apter  judge  of  fine  linen.  He  shows  no 
trace  of  the  rough  times  that  followed  the  Civil 
War,  nor  of  the  privations  of  the  early  and  mid- 
dle nineties — he  doesn't  know  what  "hard  times" 
mean.  Golf  is  his  game.  Football  is  something 
we  flock  to  see  exhibited — as  artificial  as  a  four- 
teen-inch  chrysanthemum.  We  of  an  older,  more 
heroic  age  (our  own)  shake  our  heads  and 
grumble — especially  when  we  can't  get  the  neces- 
sary tickets.  •  • 

• 

ROMANCE   ON   THE   LINKS 

IN  the  amazing  victory  of  our  young  amateur 
golfer,  Ouimet,  over  the  best  professionals 
of  Great  Britain,  Vaedon  and  Ray,  are  all  the 
elements  of  an  Oliver  Optic  novel.  The  boy 
who  lives  across  the  road  from  the  links  and 

[214] 


WE     RELAX 


works  there  as  a  caddie,  grows  up  to  win  an  in- 
ternational championship  over  the  same  course, 
and  caps  his  impossible  achievement  by  telling 
his  mother  that  he  will  be  right  home  for  dinner. 
How  this  lad  has  confounded  the  sociologists! 
Surely  it  is  preposterous  to  dream  that  a  French- 
Canadian  could  outdo  the  dogged  pluck  and  res- 
olution of  Englishmen  at  their  own  game  and  in 
their  own  weather.  The  French  are  notoriously 
a  frivolous  people,  "fond  of  dancing  and  light 
wines,"  as  the  old  geographies  have  it.  Yet  there 
is  that  name,  Ouimet,  staring  us  in  the  face !  It 
is  indeed  a  wonderful  world,  and  to  the  brave 
heart  all  things  are  possible. 


LEADING   VS.    DRIVING 

IN  the  reports  of  the  "World  Series"  were 
recorded  two  incidents  that  go  to  the  very 
heart  of  human  relations.  One  is  McGraw 
lavishing  sarcasm  on  Marqtjard  when  he  had 
foolishly  pitched  the  wrong  sort  of  curve  to  Ba- 
ker. The  other  is  Mack  sitting  between  innings 
by  his  boy  pitcher,  Bush,  and  putting  into  him 
the  heart  and  confidence  that  enabled  the  kid 
to  hold  the  Giants  helpless.  The  contrast  is  ab- 
solute. Criticism  in  the  wrong  sense  of  the  word, 
sarcasm  and  all  other  forms  of  abuse,  may  stir 
and  rouse  a  man  so  that  he  will  fight  like  a  cor- 

[215] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

nered  rat — i.  e.,  desperately.  Method,  discipline, 
authority,  are  all  fine  things  and  will  accomplish 
much  in  the  long  run,  but  in  the  now-or-never 
time  it  is  fatal  to  force  a  man's  soul  against  itself. 
You  must  lead  a  man  up  and  out  of  his  own  lim- 
itations to  the  heights  of  victory;  you  cannot  curse 
him  to  that  miracle.  Heroism  overthrows  des- 
peration. The  supreme  achievement  is  to  inspire 
a  man  so  that  he  will  surpass  his  best  when  more 
than  his  best  is  needed.  Homer  knew  the  secret 
of  it;  so  did  Garibaldi;  so  did  Mike  Murphy. 


SPORTSMANSHIP 

A  YANKEE  golfer  has  contributed  an  article 
to  a  London  newspaper  on  "Games  as 
Mathematical  Problems,"  and  one  of  the  weekly 
reviews  takes  it  as  a  text  for  preaching  once  more 
the  fine  old  sermon  on  sport  for  sport's  sake. 
Many  an  American  subscribes  to  that  theory  of 
games  and  welcomes  illustrations  of  it.  Here  is 
one  from  the  history  of  cricket. 

A  Philadelphia  eleven  visited  England  in 
1884.  One  of  the  English  players,  Mr.  G.  F. 
Vernon,  was  declared  out  by  the  umpire,  and 
took  up  his  march  for  the  "pavilion."  But  the 
man  who  was  supposed  to  have  caught  him  out 
— his  name  was  J.  B.  Thayer,  and  he  went 
down  with  the  Titanic — announced  that  he  had 

[216] 


WE     RELAX 


not  made  a  fair  catch.  This  particular  American 
was  not  "playing  the  game  to  win,"  but  happened 
to  be  what  every  cricketer  is  supposed  to  be:  a 
sportsman. 

Now  baseball  is  a  much  livelier  game  than  its 
British  prototype;  and  the  more  intense  a  sport, 
the  stronger  are  its  temptations.  These  are,  of 
course,  all  the  greater  when  a  man  earns  his  liv- 
ing by  play.  Will  the  time  come,  all  the  same, 
when  baseballers  will  consider  their  honor  in- 
volved in  actions  on  the  field  as  well  as  in  actions 
off  it?  In  the  last  analysis,  it  may  depend  upon 
us  fans.  .  . 

WORK   AND    PLAY 

THERE  are  times  when  one  thinks  that  the 
only  thing  that  really  matters  is  making 
the  essentials  of  life  better  for  one's  neighbors — 
above  all,  perhaps,  in  working  to  right  industrial 
and  social  wrongs.  Everything  else  in  our  lives 
— and  most  of  the  articles  that  go  into  the  making 
of  a  magazine,  and  most  of  the  words  on  these 
pages — seems  at  such  times  froth,  redundancy, 
trifling.  And  then  one  smiles  in  realizing  that 
without  redundancy  and  trifling,  in  word  and  ac- 
tion, we  should  never  keep  sane  or  whole;  we 
should  never  understand  or  sympathize  with  fel- 
low mortals ;  we  should  never  be  able  to  add  our 
modest  effort  to  the  world's  work. 

[217] 


XIII 
WE  STOP  AND  THINK 


ROUTINE 

DON'T  be  utterly  discouraged  because  you 
have  to  do  the  same  job  over  and  over 
again.    Nature  has  been  staging  sunsets 
and  sunrises  for  some  eons  now — yet  we  remark 
no  deterioration  in  their  quality  from  year  to 
year. 


DREAMERS    AND    SLEEPERS 

ON  a  suburban  trolley  car  we  met  a  pleasant 
faced  butcher  who  ascribed  his  success  in 
life  to  the  fact  that  he  sleeps  soundly  all  the 
time  he  is  abed,  except  sometimes  for  the  first 
three  minutes.  Successful  men  in  this  world 
might  be  divided  into  two  sorts — the  dreamers 
and  the  sleepers.  The  success  of  a  nation  de- 
pends indeed  upon  the  right  proportion  being 
maintained  between  these  two  classes  in  the  com- 
munity; if  the  sleepers  achieve  too  complete  a 
dominance,  that  nation  becomes  Boeotian  in  its 
stolidity  and  conservatism — prosperous,  perhaps, 

[218] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


in  the  things  men  buy  and  sell,  but  without  lead- 
ership or  initiative  or  beauty.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  your  nation  runs  to  dreamers — and  even 
your  plodding  clerks  and  butchers  may  dream  o* 
nights  instead  of  sleeping  all  but  the  first  three 
minutes — then,  as  the  old-fashioned  almanacs 
used  to  say,  look  out  for  storms,  revolutions,  up- 
heavals in  art  and  letters,  the  invention  of  new 
forms  of  depravity,  excess  in  everything  except, 
perhaps,  well-doing. 

It  is  a  curious  business,  this  matter  of  dream- 
ing. If  we  dreamers  succeed  we  owe  it  to  "su- 
perior imagination."  If  we  ignobly  fail  we  are 
visionaries  and  unpractical  idealists  and  well- 
meaning  theorists.  The  child  is  a  dreamer; 
as  we  grow  older  and  approach  more  closely 
the  beasts  of  the  fields  or  the  king  in  his 
counting-room,  counting  out  his  money,  the  far- 
ther we  get  from  childhood  and  from  dreams. 
And  yet  it  is  only  the  imbecile  or  the  hardened 
criminal  that  does  not  dream  at  all — and  this 
is  not  an  editorial  theory  either,  but  science  out 
of  a  book. 


THE    SAMARITAN   RELIGION 

THE  Philadelphia    "North  American"  has 
sent  to  a  number  of  persons  letters,  the 
gist  of  which  is  the  following  questions : 

[219] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMABK8 

1.  Does  your  observation  of  the  present  time  lead  you 
to  believe  that  some  sort  of  spiritual  awakening,  or  up- 
heaval, or  fresh  expression,  is  impending  or  imminent? 

2.  If  so,  what  form,  in  your  judgment,  is  the  revival,  or 
experience,  or  manifestation,  likely  to  take? 

Some  of  the  answers  published  have  been 
rather  hectic,  to  say  the  least.  But  one,  the  letter 
of  Charles  W.  Eliot,  president  emeritus  of 
Harvard  University,  is  worth  reproducing  if 
only  because  it  presents  (in  fewer  words  than  any 
one  else  could  put  them)  the  state  of  mind  of 
many  Americans  to-day: 

A  new  religious  sentiment  seems  to  me  to  be  gradually 
spreading  throughout  the  world,  and  especially  among 
young  people  in  the  United  States. 

It  is  a  sentiment  which  takes  small  account  of  cere- 
monies, rites,  sacraments,  creeds,  and  dogmas,  but  inspires 
an  enthusiasm  for  the  service  of  family,  neighbor,  and 
society  at  large. 

Guided  by  the  modern  scientific  spirit,  this  sentiment  is 
developing  a  new  kind  of  Christianity,  based  on  the  ethics 
taught  by  Jesus,  and  particularly  on  the  command  "Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  and  the  parable  of  the 
good  Samaritan. 

In  their  youth  fulness  of  spirit  these  three  sen- 
tences are  worthy  of  their  author.  Though  Dr. 
Eliot's  religion  is  not  orthodox,  it  is  sincere.  Dr. 
Eliot  is,  incidentally,  our  candidate  for  the  big- 
gest man  now  living  in  America.  Hardly  a  week 
goes  by  but  we  get,  out  of  some  of  his  public 

[220] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


utterances  or  activities,  a  fresh  conception  of  the 
loftiness  and  breadth  of  his  view  of  our  contem- 
porary civilization  and  the  things  that  are  need- 
ful for  its  richer  development. 


THE    SOUL    NEW-FOUND 

BERGSON'S  election  to  the  French  Acad- 
emy gave  opportunity  for  the  repetition  of 
the  fine  phrase  that  the  greatest  of  recent  dis- 
coveries is  not  radium  or  flying,  but  the  redis- 
covery of  the  soul.  All  honor  to  Professor 
Henri  Beegson,  and  any  number  of  green  coats 
he  likes — but  he  is  not  the  only  discoverer  of 
the  soul.  In  a  thousand  places  on  the  habitable 
globe  men  of  late  have  been  making  precisely 
that  discovery.  A  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  when 
the  great  wave  of  German  materialism  was  at 
its  height,  idealism  seemed  overwhelmingly 
buried,  hardly  showing  a  vestige  above  the  flood. 
Souls  were  a  dead  and  outworn  fashion,  a  gro- 
tesque fancy  of  poets,  fanatics,  and  divines.  Our 
lives  under  the  sun  were  merely  a  matter  of  cell 
growth,  osmosis,  and  a  set  of  chemical  reactions. 
Haeckel,  that  master  mind  of  fact,  still  lives 
to  deny  recognition  to  anything  like  an  immor- 
tal soul,  in  the  name  of  nineteenth-century 
science.  But  for  all  that,  the  wave  has  broken 
into    an   infinity   of   fragments.    A   thousand 

[221] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

watchers  in  a  thousand  places  have  rediscovered 
the  soul  and  heard  its  voice  in  their  own  inner 
silences.  Eucken  in  Germany  and  Bergson 
in  France  have  made  their  voices  heard  above 
the  din,  and  once  again  Psyche  comes  into  her 
own. 


RESURRECTION 

MOST  of  us  ought  to  be  keenly  interested 
in  death,  for  we  never  have  been  really 
alive.  We  have  never  reached  our  height,  never 
measured  up  to  what  possibilities  are  within  us. 
The  proof  is  a  matter  of  common  observation. 
A  big  company  gets  into  serious  business  diffi- 
culties, and  the  officials,  who  had  been  fussy, 
vain,  and  pompous,  become  men  again,  call  their 
subordinates  in  and  plan  the  campaign  so  that 
every  one  goes  out  a  hero — to  win.  Like  Kip- 
ling's gluttonous  old  Roman  general,  they  be- 
come "young  again  among  the  trumpets."  In 
flood  time  a  telephone  call  may  mean  safety  or 
destruction  to  many  people,  and  a  naturally  care- 
less and  flippant  girl  becomes  a  heroine,  stick- 
ing to  her  switchboard  all  night  to  send  the  mes- 
sages through  while  a  rising  river  gnaws  at  the 
building's  foundations.  Caught  by  a  cave-in,  a 
foul-mouthed  old  miner  walks  off  into  the  gas 
to  die  alone  so  that  his  younger  comrade  may 

[222] 


WE     STOP    AND     THINK 


have  what  air  there  is  and  the  chance  of  getting 
back  to  his  family.  Some  rough  fishermen 
stranded  on  a  perilous  reef  haul  down  their  sig- 
nal of  distress  because  they  know  that  a  small 
boat  cannot  live  in  that  mad  sea.  So  it  goes 
year  after  year — these  people  might  easily  be 
thought  of  as  ordinary,  dull,  and  mean,  the  com- 
monest human  animals,  but  when  the  hour  strikes 
life  flames  up  within  them  and  they  rise  to  meet 
their  fate  with  as  calm  a  soul  as  one  who  goes 
to  pick  flowers  in  his  mother's  garden.  What 
will  this  world  be  like  when  we  get  into  the  habit 
of  living  up  to  something  near  the  best  that  is 
in  us? 


DEATH    THE    ADVENTURE 

YEARS  ago  Maeterlinck  wrote  a  poignant 
little  drama,  "The  Death  of  Tintagiles." 
Yet  the  play  never  reached  the  stage  in  New 
York  till  the  other  day.  Probably  the  chief  rea- 
son is  that  death  is  therein  symbolized  as  an  in- 
exorable and  frightful  monster.  And  the  world 
has  come  to  esteem  as  more  precious  the  poets 
and  philosophers  who  have  passed  over  the  sin- 
ister side  to  dwell  on  death  with  resignation  and 
even  exultation.  It  is  the  true  Easter  spirit 
that  Stevenson  voices  when  he  says  of  one  who 
dies  young: 

[223] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

In  the  hot  fit  of  life,  a-tiptoe  on  the  highest  point  of 
being,  he  passes  at  a  bound  on  to  the  other  side.  The  noise 
of  the  mallet  and  chisel  is  scarcely  quenched,  the  trumpets 
are  hardly  done  blowing,  when,  trailing  with  him  clouds  of 
glory,  this  happy-starred,  full-blooded  spirit  shoots  into 
the  spiritual  land. 

Turn  back  a  few  centuries  and  listen  to  the 
similar  note  in  John  Donne's  noble  words: 

The  sun  is  setting  to  thee,  and  that  forever;  thy  houses 
and  furniture,  thy  garden  and  orchards,  thy  titles  and 
offices,  thy  wife  and  children,  are  departing  from  thee, 
and  that  forever;  a  cloud  of  faintness  is  come  over  thine 
eyes,  and  a  cloud  of  sorrow  over  all  theirs;  when  His  hand 
that  loves  thee  best  hangs  tremblingly  over  thee  to  close 
thine  eyes,  ecce  Salvator  tuus  venit,  behold  then  a  new 
light.  .  .  .  Though  in  the  eyes  of  men  thou  lie  upon  that 
bed  as  a  statue  on  a  tomb,  yet  in  the  eyes  of  God  thou 
standest  as  a  colossus,  one  foot  in  one,  another  in  another 
land. 

There  is  a  real  bugle  call  of  triumph  in  those 
four  Latin  words:  Lo!  thy  Savior  cometh! 
Browning  over  and  over  spoke  of  death  as  some 
thrilling  hazard  against  which  the  brave  soul  may 
prevail.  From  Browning  to  Barrie  seems  a 
long  step,  but  no  one  can  forget  how  Peter  Pan, 
in  the  play,  summarized  his  conception  of  death. 
The  rising  tide  was  creeping  up  to  him;  he  was 
told  that  he  had  to  die.  To  die!  he  cried,  and 
there  was  the  thrill  of  anticipation  in  his  voice ; 
to  die!  That'll  be  a  pretty  big  sort  of  an  adven- 
ture! 

[224] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


MEMBERS    ONE    OF   ANOTHER 

A  GREAT  lesson  for  us  all  is  that  of  the  hu- 
man unity.  The  world-old  tendency  is  to 
split  off,  to  form  ever-new  groups  and  orders 
and  combinations,  to  reject  all  those  who  will 
not  subscribe  to  some  formula  or  see  life  from 
some  one  point  of  view.  This  bent  is  encour- 
aged by  the  modern  craze  for  specialization  with 
its  liking  for  specific  societies  for  specific  pur- 
poses. The  result  seems  at  times  a  wilderness 
of  particularities ;  no  human  beings  left,  nothing 
but  crusaders  for  this  or  that,  each  rejecting  the 
other  man's  accomplishment  because  it  does  not 
attain  his  end  or  meet  the  requirements  of  his 
private  philosophy.  The  wisdom  of  this  matter 
was  stated  some  forty  years  ago  by  Benjamin 
Jowett,  master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  in 
a  letter  to  Sir  Robert  Morier,  diplomatist: 

Don't  let  us  complain  of  things  or  persons,  or  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  or  of  the  indifference  of  the  country 
occupied  in  making  money,  but  simply  say  to  ourselves: 
"These  are  the  things  and  persons  through  which  and  with 
which  we  have  to  work,  and  by  influencing  them  or  man- 
aging them  or  forcing  them,  the  end  must  be  attained  or 
not  at  all." 

Why  not  paste  this  sentiment  on  your  desk 
— and  live  up  to  it? 

[225] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


THE    WORLD    IS    YOUNG   AGAIN 

THE  central  fact  of  our  times  is  the  spirit 
of  faith  and  aspiration  which  youth  has 
kindled  in  the  world's  great  heart.  Never  was 
cynicism  held  cheaper  than  to-day.  The  nine- 
teenth century  was  an  age  of  scientific  conquest 
— but  spiritual  depression.  That  century's  more 
thoughtful  poets — Alfred  de  Vigny  in  "Moses," 
Matthew  Arnold  in  "Obermann"  and  "Dover 
Beach" — phrased  a  woeful  sense  of  emptiness: 

The  Sea  of  Faith 

Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  Earth's  shore 

Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furl'd. 

But  now  I  only  hear 

Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar, 

Retreating,  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night  wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 

And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

To  a  generation  "brought  forth  and  reared  in 
hours  of  change,  alarm,  surprise,"  the  world 

Had  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light, 
Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain. 

Man's  faith  in  man  has  been  wonderfully  re- 
stored since  that  era  of  jaded  disillusion — chiefly 
through  action.  For  a  generation  we  have  rather 
illogically  made  a  cult  of  force — however  di- 

[226] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


rected.  Our  only  justification  is  this:  a  greater 
reverence  for  life,  a  finer  ideal  of  service,  a 
quicker  enthusiasm  for  social  progress,  have  re- 
newed the  world  soul  and  wondrously  refreshed 
it.  Men  feel  that  Right  is  not  forever  on  the  scaf- 
fold. More  disappointments  are  in  store  for  us, 
but  in  the  meantime  we  are  grateful  for  this  gift 
of  courage  for  striving. 


GREED 

WHAT  is  that  sickness  of  the  soul  called 
greed?  Is  it  truly  mastering  us,  as  mor- 
alists and  prophets  have  been  telling  us,  or  can 
we  rid  ourselves  of  it,  at  least  gradually?  Very 
evidently  we  are  aware  of  the  disease,  which  is 
surely  the  first  step  to  its  eradication.  Sir  James 
B aerie,  in  a  powerful  one-act  play,  called  "The 
Will,"  that  takes  forty  minutes  to  act,  briefly 
tells  the  story  of  a  young  office  clerk  who  comes 
to  a  lawyer's  office  to  make  a  will.  His  youthful 
wife  is  weeping  hysterically  at  the  mere  sugges- 
tion of  any  instrument  so  grisly  and  harrowing 
as  a  will.  Success  comes  with  the  years,  how- 
ever, and  wealth  in  abundance,  but  all  that  was 
best  and  sweetest  in  the  lives  of  that  young  couple 
has  perished  utterly  and  left  two  hard,  cynical 
worldlings,  mere  shells  of  the  souls  that  are  dead. 
We  go  to  see  the  play;  we  delight  in  it;  we 

[227] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

applaud.  We  give  high  wages  to  Sir  James  for 
his  work  in  writing  it,  and  to  John  Drew  for 
his  work  in  acting  out  the  play.  That  is  to  say, 
we  want,  we  demand,  this  sermon,  and  we  are 
ready  to  pay  for  it.  We  desire  to  be  ever  ad- 
monished— to  pause  in  our  headlong  career 
for  wealth.  Yet  always  the  scramble  con- 
tinues, the  old  point  of  view  returns,  and  again, 
in  Dante's  phrase,  Christ  goes  on  being  "daily 
bought  and  sold."  What  cataclysm,  what  social 
revolution,  is  needed  to  show  us  once  for  all  how 
to  turn  our  back  upon  greed?  If  the  Socialists 
have  a  cure,  let  them,  in  Heaven's  name,  come 
forward.  The  trouble  is  that  modern  reformers 
talk  like  the  old  economists — without  allowing 
for  the  religious,  the  spiritual  element,  in  human 
nature.  Mankind  are  not  economic  or  political 
machines — not  even  Aristotle's  "political  ani- 
mals"— but  passionate  beings  with  higher  natures 
ever  anxious  to  be  guided  upward.  Sir  James 
Barrie  is  a  greater  reformer  than  all  politicians 
put  together.  But  if  only  a  man  would  arise 
who  could  make  Sir  James's  preachment  effective 
and  really  rid  our  lives  of  greed,  really  simplify 
them,  he  would  be  the  great  liberator  whom  all 
the  world  waits  to  acclaim. 

And  yet  that  man  is  slumbering  or  stirring  in 
the  heart  of  each  of  us. 


[228] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


WINDS    OF    DOCTRINE 

SOMETIME  before  the  war  of  many  nations 
tumbled  all  things  down  into  a  chaos  of 
intellect  and  instinct,  George  Santayana 
opened  his  book,  "Winds  of  Doctrine,"  with  these 
thought-engendering  sentences : 

The  present  age  is  a  critical  one  and  interesting  to  live 
in.  The  civilization  characteristic  of  Christendom  has  not 
yet  disappeared,  yet  another  civilization  has  begun  to  take 
its  place.  .  .  .  Our  whole  life  and  mind  is  saturated  with 
the  slow  upward  filtration  of  a  new  spirit — that  of  an 
emancipated,  atheistic,  international  democracy  .  .  .  and  a 
philosopher  in  our  day,  conscious  both  of  the  old  life  and 
the  new,  might  repeat  what  Goethe  said  of  his  successive 
love  affairs — that  it  is  sweet  to  see  the  moon  rise  while  the 
sun  is  still  mildly  shining.  .  .  .  But  how  shall  we  satisfy 
ourselves  now  whether,  for  instance,  Christianity  is  hold- 
ing its  own?  Who  can  tell  what  vagary  or  what  compro- 
mise may  not  be  calling  itself  Christianity?  A  bishop  may 
be  a  modernist,  a  chemist  may  be  a  mystical  theologian,  a 
psychologist  may  be  a  believer  in  ghosts.  For  science,  too, 
which  had  promised  to  supply  a  new  and  solid  foundation 
for  philosophy,  has  allowed  philosophy  rather  to  under- 
mine its  foundation,  and  is  seen  eating  its  own  words, 
through  the  mouths  of  some  of  its  accredited  spokesmen, 
and  reducing  itself  to  something  utterly  conventional  and 
insecure. 

An  example  of  science  "eating  its  own  words," 
of  physics  and  chemistry,  through  an  accredited 
spokesman,  allowing  philosophy  to  undermine  the 

[229] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

supposed  foundations,  appears  in  the  recent  pres- 
idential address  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  F.  R.  S., 
before  the  British  Association  at  Birmingham. 
The  great  physicist  makes  statements  best  un- 
derstood when  one  remembers  that  he  has,  for 
thirty  years,  followed  with  fascinated  eyes  the 
progress  of  "psychical  research."  The  teachings 
of  the  pragmatists  in  philosophy — Avenarius, 
James,  and  Bergson — have  not  been  without 
their  effect  upon  the  experimental  scientist,  who 
now  declares  that  either  we  are  immortal  beings 
or  we  are  not ;  that  we  may  or  may  not  know  our 
destiny,  but  must  have  a  destiny  of  some  sort; 
that  those  who  deny  are  as  likely  to  be  wrong 
as  those  who  assert;  that,  in  fact,  denials  are 
mere  assertions  cast  in  negative  form. 

Here  are  a  few  isolated  sentences  from  what 
seems  certainly  a  strange  address  for  a  man  of 
science  to  be  making  before  a  strictly  scientific 
body: 

Mysticism  must  have  its  place,  though  its  relation  to 
science  has  so  far  not  been  found. 

If  the  voices  of  Socrates  and  of  Joan  of  Arc  represent 
real  psychical  experiences,  they  must  belong  to  the  intel- 
ligible universe. 

The  methods  of  science  are  not  the  only  way,  though 
they  are  one  way,  of  arriving  at  truth. 

The  prescientific  insight  of  genius — of  poets  and  proph- 
ets and  saints — was  of  supreme  value,  and  the  access  of 
those  inspired  seers  to  the  heart  of  the  universe  was  pro- 
found. 

[230] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


Is  it  indeed  a  scientist  or  a  mystic  poet,  a  Brit- 
ish Maeterlinck,  who  speaks  thus?  One  stands 
confused  upon  the  threshold  of  Truth's  throne 
room.  Intuition  sits  on  the  dais  where  skepticism 
once  ruled  so  harshly.  Science  abdicates  dogma, 
just  as  so  many  religious  teachers  have,  and  has 
turned  amateur  impressionist,  along  with  all  the 
arts — including  the  art  of  the  dance.  Quite  as 
substantial  as  Sir  Oliver's  address  on  "Continu- 
ity" is  Alice  Meynell's  "Song  of  Deriva- 
tions "  that  commences : 

I  come  from  nothing;  but  from  where 
Come  the  undying  thoughts  I  bear? 

Down,  through  long  links  of  death  and  birth, 

From  the  past  poets  of  the  earth. 
My  immortality  is  there. 


DESTINY 

DESTINY  has  two  accepted  meanings  in  the 
popular  mind.  For  the  man  of  will,  the 
man  who  is  going  to  succeed,  it  means  to-day; 
to-day  as  the  nucleus  of  to-morrow,  and  so  on 
to  the  logical  development  of  each  day's  meas- 
ured strength.  To  the  man  of  no  will  power, 
who  will  probably  never  succeed,  it  means  to- 
morrow; to-morrow  in  which  he  backbonelessly 
hopes  and,  while  doing  so,  accomplishes  merely 

[231] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

graceful  feats  on  an  inclined  plane  verging  to- 
ward success.  These  alternative  viewpoints 
stamp  a  man  or  woman.  There  are  those  who 
walk  hand  in  hand  with  the  present,  who  rec- 
ognize and  greet  destiny  every  day,  snatching 
the  best  the  moment  has  to  give.  Others  have 
a  vague  idea  that  the  present  is  simply  a  make- 
shift, not  preparatory  but  precedent  to  some  fate 
that  awaits  them  in  a  beneficent  future.  This 
fate  they  believe  will  arrive  with  much  the  charm- 
ing unexpectedness  of  a  fairy  godmother.  Their 
awakening  is  short  and  sometimes  tragic  by  rea- 
son of  their  irresponsible  optimism.  Thus  the 
conception  of  destiny  in  each  individual  mind  be- 
comes the  strength  of  man  or  the  despair  of  man, 
his  blessing  or  his  curse.  Destiny  is  to-day,  this 
moment ;  it  is  every  act  that  is  slipping  into  time, 
as  well  as  the  ultimate  development  of  those 
acts.  The  very  things  that  we  encounter  in  seek- 
ing to  avoid  so-called  destiny  become  destiny. 


TIME 

AMID  all  the  welter  of  talk  about  the  new 
year — the  pretty-pretty  sentimentality,  the 
ponderous  preaching  about  good  resolutions  and 
swearing  off — one  great  fact  remains.  That  is 
Time.  Time  passed,  Artemus  Ward  once 
wrote;  it's  a  sort  of  way  Time  has.    Here  is  one 

[232] 


WE     STOP     AND     THINK 


thing  which  no  cynic  has  ever  been  able  to  deride 
successfully.  Ideals,  innocence,  love,  even  death, 
have  been  targets,  but  no  sneer  has  ever  touched 
Time.  On  and  on  stalk  the  years — the  most  in- 
exorable of  marchers.  Time  treats  all  alike — 
pugilist  and  debutante,  king  and  gutter  snipe. 
It  plays  no  favorites.  With  each  revolution  the 
creeping  minute  hand  puts  one  more  hour  be- 
hind. Perhaps  it  is  well  that  no  normal  mind 
dwells  on  all  this.  It  is  better  to  realize  that 
the  marching  morrows  have  their  glories  and  in- 
spirations. What  is  past  is  past;  but  the  future 
is  always  just  ahead,  and  it  is  ours. 


WORRY 

CONCENTRATED  thought  is  virtually 
irresistible.  All  the  vast  edifice  of  modern 
science  and  industry  is  obviously  the  product  of 
thought,  much  of  it  of  our  own  time  and  observa- 
tion. The  birth  of  an  idea  in  the  human  mind 
is  clearly  the  one  and  only  dawn  of  empires  and 
revolutions,  of  engines,  philosophies,  trade 
routes,  civilizations.  To  class  worry  under  the 
head  of  thinking,  therefore,  seems  a  glaring  sac- 
rilege. Yet  worry  is  thought,  for  all  that — dis- 
eased, impure,  adulterated  thought.  It  means  an 
admixture  of  emotion,  of  the  worst  of  all  the  emo- 
tions— fear — into    one's    thinking.     Instead   of 

[233] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

concentrated,  clear,  serene  thinking  on  the  prob- 
lem in  hand,  worry  is  thinking,  muddied  black 
with  fear.  It  is  about  as  helpful  as  clapping  the 
brakes  upon  wheels  toiling  uphill.  Yet  all  the 
world  is  laboring  under  that  Egyptian  heaviness 
of  the  wheels,  and  almost  every  spirit  is  a  spirit 
in  the  dark  prison  of  fear.  But  once  we  grasp 
this  truth  clearly,  once  we  convince  ourselves 
that  we  can  rid  our  thought  of  emotionalism,  of 
fear,  the  day  of  our  deliverance  is  at  hand.  There 
may  be  failures  and  backslidings,  as  is  customary 
in  all  mortal  effort  and  human  endeavor.  But 
fear  is  weakened  like  a  choking  thing,  and  more 
and  more  clear  and  unimpeded  becomes  our 
thinking.  For  we  realize  at  last,  once  for  all, 
that  where  thinking  cannot  help  us,  fear  certainly 
will  not.    And  then  we  have  worry  by  the  throat. 


[284] 


XIV 
THE  LAND  WE  LIVE  BY 

ONE   AMERICAN   FARMER 

WE  who  to-day  preach  the  religion  of  the 
back-to-the-farm  movement  ought  not  to 
forget  the  delightful  book  entitled  "Let- 
ters from  an  American  Farmer,"  first  published 
in  1782  and  now  made  accessible  to  the  general 
public  in  a  low-priced  reprint.  The  author  of 
the  letters  was  a  Norman  who  came  to  America 
as  a  military  engineer  in  the  army  of  Montcalm  ; 
his  name  was  St.  Jean  de  Creveccetjr,  and  he 
was  naturalized  as  an  American  citizen  under 
that  of  Saint-John.  The  style  of  the  "Ameri- 
can Farmer,"  as  he  calls  himself,  is  distinctly  of 
its  time,  yet  the  book  is  certainly  one  of  the  three 
most  valuable  which  we  produced  in  that  century, 
the  others  being  Franklin's  "Autobiography" 
and  John  Woolman's  "Journal."  Says  Creve- 
cceue: 

When  I  go  abroad  it  is  always  involuntary.  I  never 
return  without  feeling  some  pleasing  emotion,  which  I 
often  suppress  as  useless  and  foolish.     The  instant  I  enter 

[235] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

on  my  own  land,  the  bright  ideas  of  property,  of  exclusive 
right,  of  independence,  exalt  my  mind.  Precious  soil,  I 
say  to  myself,  by  what  singular  custom  of  law  is  it  that 
thou  wast  made  to  constitute  the  riches  of  the  freeholder? 
What  should  we  American  farmers  be  without  the  distinct 
possession  of  that  soil  ?  It  feeds,  it  clothes  us ;  from  it  we 
draw  even  a  great  exuberance,  our  best  meat,  our  richest 
drink,  the  very  honey  of  our  bees.  .  .  .  This  formerly 
rude  soil  has  been  converted  by  my  father  into  a  pleasant 
farm,  and  in  return  it  has  established  all  our  rights;  on  it 
is  founded  our  rank,  our  freedom,  our  power  as  citizens, 
our  importance  as  inhabitants  of  such  a  district.  ...  It  is 
not  composed,  as  in  Europe,  of  great  lords  who  possess 
everything,  and  of  a  herd  of  people  who  have  nothing. 
Here  are  no  aristocratical  families,  no  counts,  no  kings, 
no  bishops,  no  ecclesiastical  dominion,  no  invisible  power 
giving  to  a  few  a  very  visible  one;  no  great  manufacturers 
employing  thousands,  no  great  refinements  of  wealth. 

The  rich  and  the  poor  are  not  so  far  removed  from  each 
other  as  they  are  in  Europe. 

Conditions  in  America  have  changed,  but  the 
love  of  freedom  remains.  So  do  the  pleasures 
of  the  farmer  who  mixes  intelligence  and  senti- 
ment with  his  efficiency.  The  world  is  altered 
from  century  to  century,  decade  to  decade,  but 
mankind  changes  less  rapidly.  If  you  ever  en- 
joyed reading  Thoreau  or  Ik  Marvel  or  Rich- 
ard Jeffries,  you  will  find  your  reward  in  mak- 
ing Crevecosur's  acquaintance. 

One.  of  the  cheerful  facts  about  America  to- 
day is  the  certainty  that  all  our  economic 
changes,  now  causing  such  unrest,  tend  to  with- 

[236] 


THE     LAND     WE    LIVE     BY 

draw  the  unwholesome  stimulus  that  factory  life 
has  had,  and  to  restore  and  increase  the  number 
of  persons  who  will  possess  their  own  small 
pieces  of  land  and  raise  wholesome  families  upon 
them.  .  . 

WHEAT    PRICES    AND    BREAD 

THE  wheat  in  the  hands  of  the  American 
farmer — is  it  to  be  seized  by  the  Govern- 
ment to  depress  bread  prices?  That  is  practi- 
cally what  an  embargo  on  its  exportation  would 
mean.  Before  taking  so  unprecedented  a  step, 
even  when  suggested  by  Mr.  George  W.  Per- 
kins and  Mayor  Mitchel  of  New  York,  it  will 
be  wise  for  the  Government  to  stop,  look,  and 
listen.  The  farmers,  as  this  is  written,  receive 
at  their  railway  stations  from  $1.40  upward  for 
their  wheat.  In  Chicago  May  wheat  has  sold 
at  $1.4114  after  touching  a  point  almost  twenty 
cents  higher.  This  should  be  considered  by  those 
who  fix  their  eyes  on  the  price  of  bread  only. 
We  have  just  weighed  a  "pound"  loaf  bought 
at  the  corner  grocery.  It  weighed  three-quar- 
ters of  a  pound  in  its  sanitary  wrapper.  How 
much  are  city  people  paying  for  the  bread  in  a 
bushel  of  wheat  at  this  rate?  Good  milling  will 
convert  from  70  to  73  per  cent,  of  the  wheat  into 
flour — and  we  have  good  millers  in  the  United 
States.     A  bushel  will  yield  about  forty-four 

[237] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

pounds  of  flour.  Seven  pounds  of  flour,  ac- 
cording to  the  requirements  of  the  best  bak- 
eries, must  yield  nine  pounds  of  bread,  or  fifty- 
seven  pounds  of  bread  to  the  bushel  of  wheat. 
This  means  seventy-six  loaves  of  the  size  now 
sold  in  our  neighborhood.  Mayor  Mitchel 
was  justly  concerned,  for  in  New  York  City  the 
loaf  sold  for  some  days  at  six  cents.  The  city's 
poor  were,  therefore,  paying  $4.56  for  the  flour 
in  a  bushel  of  wheat!  When  the  by-products 
are  taken  into  account,  the  ultimate  consumers 
are  paying  more  than  three  times  for  their  wheat 
what  the  farmer  gets. 

If  the  Government  will  attend  to  the  grocers, 
the  bakers,  the  millers,  the  railways,  the  elevator 
men,  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  all  the  others 
who  are  getting  more  than  $3  out  of  a  bushel  of 
wheat,  and  then  stand  before  the  farmer  with 
proof  that  the  pound  loaf  cannot  be  sold  for  five 
cents,  the  farmer  will  take  his  medicine.  And 
not  until  then.  For  until  the  Government 
can  do  this,  it  cannot  come  with  clean  hands 
before  the  man  who  produced  the  wheat  in  the 
sweat  of  his  brow.  The  best  solution  of  what- 
ever wheat  scarcity  there  may  exist  is  to  let  only 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand  send  up  the  price 
of  wheat.  Under  such  conditions  the  farmer  will 
sow  in  wheat  every  available  acre  everywhere, 
fertilize  it,  care  for  it,  garner  it  in,  and  place  it 
on  the  market. 

[288] 


THE     LAND     WE    LIVE     BY 


DON'T   LEAN    AGAINST    THE    BREECHING 

IN  our  editorial  "Wheat  Prices  and  Bread" 
we  pointed  out  the  wide  difference  between 
farm  prices  and  what  the  consumer  pays.  Mr. 
M.  G.  Nixon,  a  farmer  of  Waterford,  Ohio, 
now  writes  that  "sorted  apples  sold  here  last  fall 
for  from  25  to  30  cents  a  bushel;  yet  we  are 
told  to  increase  production  as  the  greatest  thing 
we  can  do  to  alleviate  farming  conditions."  And 
the  Jackson  (Miss.)  "News,"  commenting  on  a 
report  that  "potatoes  selling  on  farms  in  Wis- 
consin for  25  cents  a  bushel  cost  $1.03  at  retail 
in  Chicago,"  adds: 

In  Michigan  live  many  farmers  who  get  even  less  for 
potatoes.  Many  can't  sell  their  spuds  at  any  price,  and 
are  feeding  'em  to  the  pigs.  But  in  Chicago,  a  few  hours' 
ride  away,  the  price  is  half  of  the  average  man's  daily 
wage;  and  while  very  many  men  aren't  getting  any  wage, 
the  price  of  spuds  is  steadily  going  higher. 

Of  course  everybody  knows  that  this  isn't  a  local  but  a 
widespread  condition,  applying  to  most  food  products  and 
almost  every  large  community;  yet  here's  the  queer  part 
of  it: 

Though  everybody  knows  of  it  and  is  grouching  about 
it,  that  old  scoundrel,  Nobody,  corrects  it.  A  few  good 
souls  are  trying  hard  to  bridge  the  chasm,  but  they  aren't 
succeeding. 

The  main  reason  why  the  farmers  of  this  coun- 
try suffer  so  much  from  extortion  is  that  they 

[239] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

fail  to  grasp  the  tremendous  power  that  is  within 
their  reach.  They  have  the  sympathy  of  the  great 
mass  of  consumers — fellow  victims  of  middle- 
men's greed — and  the  law  recognizes  their  right 
to  organize  and  fight  for  their  rights.  All  that 
farmers  as  a  class  need  do  to  become  far  stronger 
than  the  biggest  trust  is  to  get  together  and 
pull  together  for  their  common  cause,  to  put 
their  shoulders  to  the  hames  of  progress  instead 
of  throwing  their  weight  against  the  breeching. 


THE  BEST  PLACE  TO  BE  POOR 

A  MICHIGAN  woman  is  married  to  a  man 
who  came  from  a  farm  to  Pontiac  when 
he  was  fifteen  years  old  and  went  to  work  for 
$2.50  a  week.  He  makes  $15  a  week  now,  in 
an  automobile  factory;  he  has  five  children;  his 
health  is  not  good;  he  says  that  factory  work  is 
killing  him;  and  the  wife,  who  cooks  for  him 
and  takes  care  of  his  children,  says  that  at  home 
he  is  "as  cross  as  a  bear."  Although  she  has 
never  lived  in  the  country,  the  wife  wants  to  go 
to  a  farm;  and  the  young  children  "talk  farm 
all  the  time."  There  is  a  pathetic  irony  in  what 
the  husband  and  father  says  when  the  issue  is 
joined:  "Now  you  just  shut  right  up  about 
a  farm,  because  I  have  no  intention  of  going  to 
starve  my  life  out  on  a  farm."    He  tells  his  wife 

[240] 


THE    LAND    WE    LIVE    BY 

that  she  would  be  lonesome,  that  she  would  get 
sick  of  the  farm.  "Maybe  I  would,"  the  woman 
says,  "but  it  couldn't  be  worse  than  it  is  now — 
it  couldn't  be  as  bad  as  this  struggle  to  keep 
body  and  soul  together  on  my  man's  wages." 
These  two  Americans  of  Pontiac  have  raised  a 
question  which  is  troubling  their  fellow  Ameri- 
cans all  over  the  country.  What  can  I  do  to 
get  away  from  the  city?  Can  a  city-bred  man 
with  a  capital  of  $1,000  or  less  succeed  on  a 
farm?  Where  can  I,  a  salaried  man  of  thirty- 
seven,  making  $1,800  a  year,  go  to  find  a  farm? 
Doubtless  there  are  some  sophisticated  souls 
who  think  these  are  humble  questions.  It  is  one 
of  the  fortunate  facts  about  the  future  of  this 
country  that  a  regime  like  Woodrow  Wilson's 
recognizes  questions  like  these  as  being  close  to 
the  foundations  of  statesmanship. 


WILL   $1,000   DO   IT? 

SOME  weeks  ago  we  asked  if  a  city-bred  man 
with  a  capital  of  $1,000  or  less  could  suc- 
ceed on  a  farm.  That  the  question  is  one  of 
much  popular  interest  is  indicated  by  the  num- 
ber of  letters  we  have  received  in  reply.  While 
these  letters  are  interesting,  they  do  not  make  a 
sufficiently  definite  answer  to  the  question.  They 
tell  of  the  cheap  lands  and  the  general  advan- 

[241] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

tages  of  many  sections  of  the  country,  and  of  the 
need  for  more  and  better  agriculture.  One  writer 
says  that  professional  men,  clerks,  and  those 
untrained  in  farming  make  the  best  kind  of  farm- 
ers— after  they  get  started.  Another  writer  says 
that  in  his  section  $1,000  "will  go  a  long  ways." 
Is  "a  long  ways"  far  enough  so  he  can  go  the 
rest  of  the  way  alone?  We  think  it  would  be 
a  great  service  if  some  one  of  our  readers  could 
describe  with  careful  devotion  to  details  just 
how  it  can  be  done.  Remember,  the  man  with 
the  $1,000  is  a  city-bred  man,  lacking  experi- 
ence with  farm  life.  Take  him  from  any  city 
you  please  and  locate  him  on  a  farm  in  any  sec- 
tion you  please  with  a  reasonable  assurance  of  a 
sound  roof  over  his  head,  and  food  and  clothes 
for  himself  and  his  family. 

Formerly,  our  best  farmers  started  with  less 
than  $1,000 — in  most  cases  with  less  than  $10. 
They  were  the  Irish  and  German  immigrants 
who  went  straight  from  the  ship  to  work  as  hired 
men  on  farms.  Out  of  the  $15  or  $20  a  month 
they  got  in  addition  to  their  board  they  saved 
enough  to  buy  a  few  acres  of  land.  Is  the  city 
man  of  the  present  generation  too  weak  in  fiber, 
too  infirm  of  purpose,  too  lacking  in  endurance 
and  initiative  for  this  process? 


[242] 


THE     LAND     WE    LIVE     BY 


DO   YOU   BELIEVE    IN    FARMING? 

LETTERS  which  have  come  to  Collier's  from 
those  who  have  moved  from  the  city  to  the 
farm  are  convincing  on  one  point.  Unless  you 
take  to  the  land  a  firm  faith  in  its  power  to  heal 
your  harassed  spirit,  harden  your  muscles,  and 
supply  your  table  with  plain  and  nourishing  food, 
you  had  better  not  make  the  change.  "There  is 
more  in  the  man  than  the  land,"  a  landowner  who 
has  many  tenants  in  southern  Georgia  quotes.  "I 
find  that  some  of  my  tenants  make  money  every 
year,  regardless  of  the  seasons,  while  others  make 
money  only  in  the  favorable  seasons." 

On  another  point  agreement  is  not  general: 
What  is  the  best  preliminary  training  for  the 
man  with  a  family  and  a  capital  of  $1,000  or  less 
who  makes  up  his  mind  firmly  to  go  to  the  farm? 
It  is  a  point  on  which  we  should  be  glad  to  have 
more  light.  Should  the  city  man  work  for  wages 
on  a  farm  while  he  is  learning?  Should  he  go 
to  a  rented  farm  for  a  year  or  more  before  in- 
vesting his  capital  in  farming  land?  Or  should 
he  take  the  plunge  at  once,  acquire  a  very  small 
patch  of  land,  plan  a  budget  of  living  expenses 
which  he  can  certainly  supply  for  a  limited  pe- 
riod, and  be  his  own  boss  from  the  beginning? 
What  help  can  he  get  before  he  is  ready  to  quit 
his  job  in  the  city?    What  books  and  bulletins 

[243] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

are  worth  getting?  How  can  he  get  them ?  What 
colleges  and  experiment  stations  can  help  him 
to  decide  upon  the  location  and  soil  best  adapted 
for  the  kind  of  farming  he  wants  to  do?  Where 
can  he  get  reliable  figures  on  the  price  of  land? 
You  who  believe  in  farming  as  a  way  out  of 
the  thicket  of  rising  prices  and  inelastic  wages, 
help  us  to  answer  these  questions. 


THINK   OF   A    $25,000    COW! 

HERE  is  another  example  of  efficiency  and 
devotion. 
May  Rilma,  an  American-bred  Guernsey  be- 
longing to  Major  Edward  B.  Cassatt  of  Ber- 
wyn,  Pa.,  has  completed  a  year's  test  in  which  she 
has  established  a  record  for  the  production  of 
butter  fat — 1,073.41  pounds,  equivalent  to  al- 
most 1,300  pounds  of  butter.  The  ex-champions 
are  Holsteins — Colantha  IV's  Johanna,  the 
property  of  W.  J.  Gilette  of  Rosendale,  Wis. ; 
and  a  cow  owned  by  F.  F.  Field  of  Brockton, 
Mass.  ( Owners'  names  are  worth  repeating,  too, 
for  the  human  factor  counts  even  in  cow  cham- 
pionships.) Nothing  that  experience  or  science 
can  offer  was  neglected  by  the  Pennsylvania 
cow's  ambitious  master.  May  Rilma  has  enjoyed 
absolute  comfort:  a  roomy  box  stall  kept  clean; 
wide  windows  screened  with  muslin  to  prevent 

[244] 


THE     LAND     WE    LIVE     BY 

direct  draft;  a  carefully  groomed  coat  that  any 
race  horse  might  envy;  an  even  temperature,  as 
near  60  degrees  as  possible  (no  wasted  effort  in 
resisting  cold  or  heat) ;  a  scientifically  balanced 
ration  of  grain,  vegetables,  ensilage,  and  alfalfa 
— the  last  two  always  before  her,  but  removed 
from  the  racks  at  the  end  of  the  day  and  re- 
placed by  fresh.  Nothing  has  broken  in  upon 
her  perfect  peace.  She  has  the  absolute  devo- 
tion of  one  attendant,  who  sleeps  in  an  adjoin- 
ing box  stall  fitted  up  as  a  cell-like  room.  Here 
stands  the  stove  that  regulates  the  evenness  of 
the  winter  temperature.  No  cow  likes  to  change 
milkers.  This  one  is  milked  (always  by  the  same 
man)  at  eight-hour  intervals:  4  a.  m.,  12  m.,  8 
p.  m.  And  over  and  above  earning  for  herself 
this  luxurious  living  and  paying  for  a  quarter 
of  one  man's  wage,  she  nets  her  owner  an  actual 
cash  profit. 

After  all,  though,  it  wasn't  only  Major  Cas- 
satt  and  Queen  May  Rilma  who  won  out.  Much 
credit  belongs  to  Albert  Van  Tuinen,  first 
gentleman  in  waiting,  who  did  the  milking. 


REALLY   LIVING 

PIERRE  LOTI  has  gone  back  to  the  old 
house  in  the  shadow  of  the  tomb  of  the 
Sultan  Achmet,  where  the  nightingales  sing  and 

[245] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

the  sleepy  fountain  plays,  and,  although  he  speaks 
kindly  of  us,  he  doubts  that  he  will  ever  visit 
America  again.  Some  of  the  newspapers  had 
a  good  deal  of  fun  with  the  distinguished  French- 
man. Reporters  who  saw  him  when  he  came  up 
the  bay  stated  that  he  blacked  his  eyebrows  and 
"touched  up"  his  complexion — phenomena  which 
were  not  observable  when  he  sailed  away.  The 
same  reporters  would  give  their  eyeteeth  to  write 
any  one  of  a  hundred  chapters  in  Loti's  books. 
Fashions  have  changed,  to  be  sure.  The  velvet 
coat  and  flowing  tie  have  gone  out.  The  author 
now  is  a  good  citizen  as  well  as  artist,  and  lives, 
like  enough,  in  a  noisy  apartment  house.  Our 
late  visitor  belongs  to  another  generation.  And 
if,  in  his  middle  age,  it  should  please  the  author 
of  "Pecheur  d'Islande"  and  "Les  Desenchantees" 
to  wear  a  belt  of  shells  or  put  feathers  in  his  hair, 
like  a  red  Indian,  has  he  not  earned  the  right? 
Loti  was  impressed  with  the  tremendous  "ac- 
tivity" of  New  York,  but  not  so  sure  of  the 
value  of  this  hubbub  in  terms  of  the  eternal  veri- 
ties— whatever  they  may  be.  And  this  is  a  com- 
ment, especially  as  it  applies  to  our  accomplish- 
ment in  the  art  to  which  he  has  devoted  himself, 
that  is  not  so  easily  disposed  of.  There  is  plenty 
of  clever  writing  in  this  country,  but  not  much 
literature,  and  we  think  it  safe  to  say  that  litera- 
ture is  precisely  what  Loti  has  written,  even 
if    he    appears    to    the    average    American    a 

[246] 


THE     LAND     WE     LIVE     BY 

cranky  esthete  several  centuries  behind  the  times. 
Our  always  entertaining  friend,  the  New  York 
"Sun,"  which  writes  of  "this  town"  in  the  quaint 
Queen  Anne  vein,  and  nobly  endeavors  to  main- 
tain the  illusion  that  New  York  is  as  much  a 
place  for  people  really  to  live  in  as  the  London  of 
"The  Spectator's"  time,  avers  that  a  permanent 
establishment  in  the  shadow  of  Achmet's  tomb 
would  be  inconceivable  for  any  New  Yorker, 
however  it  may  suit  "an  indolent  fancy  approach- 
ing the  vanishing  point."  Mr.  Loti's  fancy 
may  be  indolent,  yet  he  has  produced  a  shelf- 
ful  of  novels  and  made  himself  one  of  the  greatest 
descriptive  artists  of  his  time.  New  York  is  one  of 
the  most  stimulating  environments  in  the  world, 
but  something  besides  stimulants  is  needed  for 
real  living  or  the  best  work.  For  that  purpose 
the  sleepy  fountain  and  the  nightingale  may  be 
even  more  useful  than  the  cold  shower  and  the 
roar  of  streets.  Emerson's  is  perhaps  the  most 
virile  and  authoritative  voice  that  has  spoken  in 
America,  and  Emerson  lived  in  a  little  New 
England  village. 


THE    GOOD    FIGHT 

IS  it,  as  most  writers  assume,  much  easier  to  be 
good  in  the  country  ?    We  doubt  it.    Morality 
is  still  a  matter  of  the  individual  soul,  not  a  by- 

[247] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

product  of  topography,  race,  or  social  position. 
The  struggle  against  temptation  is  not  over  when 
you  have  attained  a  minimum  wage,  put  some- 
thing in  the  bank,  or  bought  a  house  of  your  own. 
Those  who  lose  the  fight  against  animalism  lose 
it  as  disastrously  in  the  most  beautiful  orchards 
and  meadows  as  in  the  garish  shadows  of  South 
Clark  Street  or  Broadway.  Other  things  help 
or  hinder,  but  salvation  is  individual  to-day  just 
as  it  always  has  been. 


WOMAN'S   "NEW   FREEDOM" 

FALSE  as  a  wig."  That  is  the  way  a  corre- 
spondent of  ours  disposes  of  an  account  of 
"The  Breakdown"  that  Collier's  published  a  few 
weeks  ago.    The  letter  is  worth  quoting: 

Have  you  any  idea  of  moral  conditions  as  they  are  in  the 
average  dull  small  town?  Morals  are  personal.  Eternal 
vigilance  is  the  price  of  decency:  keep  boys  and  girls  busy 
at  something  interesting.  In  a  small  town  a  lot  of  people 
sit  round  and  stew  in  a  slow,  dirty,  stupid  mess  of  sexual 
corruption.  Have  you  ever  heard  the  talk  in  a  small  coun- 
try bar  or  barber  shop?  In  the  city  men  have  to  meet  and 
overcome  their  job  every  day,  and  the  blood  must  circulate 
in  brains  and  muscles.  The  animal  incidents  of  life  are 
not  so  grossly  in  evidence.  Have  you  read  Zola's  novel, 
"La  Terre"? 

What  you  need  chiefly  to  get  hold  of  is  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  selective  process  going  on  in  this  world.     Some 

[248] 


THE    LAND     WE     LIVE     BY 

go  to  the  city  to  die  (more  or  less  slowly),  but  more  go 
there  to  live.  The  girls  of  the  city  see  the  facts  of  prosti- 
tution more  clearly  than  you  writers;  they  know  harlotry 
to  be  less  a  matter  of  champagne  and  fifty-dollar  hats  than 
one  of  helpless  exposure  to  the  beastly  and  brutal  whims 
of  the  fellow  who  has  the  price.  It  means  lingering  death. 
Matrimony  pays  much  better  dividends.  Working  girls 
hang  together  in  all  ways:  please  notice  the  protective  de- 
meanor they  use  when  on  the  street.  If  allowed  free  effect 
the  sentiment  of  the  girls  will  force  the  "tough  ones"  out 
of  the  average  factory  or  office.  Ask  any  man  who  is  fa- 
miliar with  conditions  in  the  telephone  central  offices  of  the 
large  cities  ten  years  ago  and  now. 

We  are  hindering  sex  oppression,  and  will  make  it  in- 
creasingly difficult  and  dangerous,  but  we  can  never  make 
empty  sacks  stand  up.  Women  are,  as  your  editorial  on 
"The  Breakdown"  suggested,  freer  now  to  live  their  own 
lives  and  to  make  their  own  choices.  They  are  less  and 
less  under  tutelage  and  guardianship. 

We  thank  our  critic  for  pointing  out  the 
brighter  side  of  this  brand  of  the  "New  Free- 
dom." He  exaggerates  his  point,  but  is  justi- 
fied in  urging  that  the  towns  and  villages  have  no 
monopoly  of  virtue.  The  city's  test  consists  in 
cruelly  seeking  out  one's  weaknesses — weak- 
nesses that  might  have  gone  unsuspected  and 
undeveloped  at  home,  on  farm  or  in  village.  The 
young  man  or  young  woman  who  has  purpose 
and  self-respect,  and  something  beyond  that — 
an  idealism  that  has  assumed  many  forms,  but 
always  makes  for  character — need  not  fear  the 
city.    It  is  the  drifter  who  throws  up  her  arms 

[249] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

and  goes  down  in  mid-channel.  But  the  drifters 
are  many,  and  they  do  not  always  realize  their 
own  impotence. 


QUALIFICATION 

OUR  remarks  on  being  good  in  the  city  and 
the  country  were  thought,  by  at  least  one 
reader,  to  have  an  odd  ring  after  what  we  have 
iterated  and  reiterated  in  comparison  of  the  two 
for  the  last  decade.  Perhaps  we  ought  to  be 
more  explicit.  What  we  meant  was  that  high 
enough  individual  resolve  could  not  be  thwarted 
by  any  environment.  Of  course,  to  the  normally 
constituted,  Nature  and  the  beauty  of  the  coun- 
try have  a  tendency  to  inspire  and  purify.  Sages 
and  poets  alike  have  recognized  this.  Old  Abra- 
ham Cowley,  hymning  rural  joys,  voiced  the 
selfsame  thought: 

Well  then:  I  now  do  plainly  see 
This  busy  world  and  I  shall  ne'er  agree; 


And  they,  methinks,  deserve  my  pity, 
Who  for  it  can  endure  the  stings 
The  crowd,  the  buzz,  and  murmurings 

Of  this  great  hive,  the  city. 

I  should  have  then  this  only  fear, 
Lest  men,  when  they  my  pleasure  see, 
[250] 


THE     LAND     WE     LIVE     BY 

Should  hither  throng  to  live  like  me, 
And  make  a  city  here. 

It  was  Ruskin  who  spoke  of  mountains  as  the 
great  maker  of  nobility.  And  Wordsworth's 
whole  philosophy  is  rooted  in  the  way  Nature  is 
eternally  aiding  mankind  to  be  good : 

Therefore  am  I  still 
A  lover  of  the  meadows  and  the  woods, 
And  mountains;  .  .  . 

well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  nature  and  the  language  of  the  sense, 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being. 

If  anyone  ever  wrote  thus  of  the  city,  we  can- 
not now  recall  it. 


OPPORTUNITY 

WHEN  J.  Sterling  Morton  began  life 
on  a  Nebraska  homestead  he  built  his 
house  with  his  own  hands.  He  was  a  college 
graduate  and  the  son  and  grandson  of  men  with 
intellectual  occupations.  The  young  wife  who 
did  the  cooking  in  the  house  had  a  similar  culti- 
vation and  ancestry.  In  this  home  Morton  had 
the  career  which  ended  in  a  Cabinet  office,  and 
raised  a  son  who  was  also  a  Cabinet  member. 

[251] 


NATIONAL     FLOOD  MARES 

What  young  couple  is  so  poor  to-day  that  such 
a  home  is  beyond  them,  granted  the  willingness 
to  work  with  their  hands  and  granted  that  edu- 
cation and  city  life  have  not  made  them  effemi- 
nate? Granted  the  same  endowment  of  charac- 
ter and  mind,  a  career  of  equal  dignity  and  ful- 
fillment is  as  possible  to-day.  Much  so-called 
social  reform  is  governed  by  a  spirit  which  puts 
the  mark  of  intolerable  burdens  upon  those  con- 
ditions which  call  out  initiative  and  hard  work. 
Most  of  the  city  dwellers,  whom  the  reformers 
seek  to  mark  as  objects  of  pity  and  governmental 
solicitude,  could  cure  many  of  their  own  ills  by  a 
thirty-mile  walk  into  the  country.  A  wholesale 
exodus  of  the  kind  would  do  much  to  restore  the 
economic  balance,  solve  the  question  of  the  unem- 
ployed, and  mend  most  of  the  troubles  about 
which  Socialists  and  philanthropists  lie  awake. 
It  would  insure  generations  of  clean  bodies  and 
sound  minds,  just  as  surely  as  keeping  them  in 
the  city,  coddling  them  there,  and  putting  pre- 
miums on  the  absence  rather  than  the  presence  of 
initiative  and  self-reliance,  will  breed  a  poor  race. 
Says  Debs,  the  Socialist  candidate  for  Presi- 
dent: "Had  Lincoln  been  born  in  a  sweatshop, 
he  would  never  have  been  heard  of."  Had  Lin- 
coln's ancestors,  or  Lincoln  himself,  been  of  the 
lax  fiber  which  sticks  to  the  sweatshop  because  of 
the  light,  the  crowds,  and  the  steam-heat,  prob- 
ably they  never  would  have  been  heard  of.    But 

[252] 


THE     LAND     WE    LIVE     BY 

they  had  the  self-reliance  and  self-sufficiency 
which  make  the  more  solitary  life  of  the  farm  en- 
durable. Any  sweatshop  worker  can  give  his 
children  much  more  than  Lincoln's  start  by  a 
two  days'  walk  in  the  country  and  a  self  abnega- 
tion sufficient  to  deny  himself  Coney  Island  and 
the  corner  saloon. 


CORN 

ONE  ear  of  Pascal  corn  has  been  sold 
for  $150.  The  grand  sweepstakes  ear  of 
corn  at  the  National  Corn  Exposition  at  Chicago 
last  year  sold  for  $250.  To  the  farmer  the  dif- 
ference between  good  seed  and  bad  means  a  profit 
in  the  bank  or  another  year  of  nose  to  the  grind- 
stone. Of  7,978  cars  of  corn  sold  on  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Trade  last  June,  4,332 — more  than 
half — were  "low  grade."  The  corn-belt  farmer 
should  be  ashamed  of  this.  The  American  oat 
crop  has  so  degenerated  that  the  breakfast-food 
makers  lack  raw  material.  It  is  all  a  matter  of 
good  seed.  County  and  State  fairs  give  $2,000 
in  prizes  for  trotting  horses,  and  $10  for  ears  of 
corn.  The  National  Corn  Exposition,  to  be  held 
at  Omaha,  December  9-19,  will  give  a  $500  prize 
for  the  best  bushel  of  corn — seventy  ears — and  a 
$410  prize  for  the  best  twenty  ears.  Good  seed 
is  corn  that  has  vitality  to  resist  disease  and 

[253] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

drought,  rich  in  the  oils  and  protein  that  make 
the  layers  of  lean  in  bacon.  It  takes  as  much 
land  and  hoe-wear,  as  much  horse-sweat  and  el- 
bow-grease, to  grow  poor  corn  as  the  best. 


THE    CONNECTING    LINK 

THAT  back-to-the-land  idea  is  going  to  be- 
come a  reality  if  certain  energetic  people 
have  their  way.  A  number  of  highly  qualified 
men  and  women  are  organizing  the  National 
Forward-to-the-Land  League  to  bring  together 
the  man,  the  money,  and  the  land.  All  the  de- 
tailed information  now  on  file  in  the  Federal 
Departments  of  Labor  and  Agriculture  is  to  be 
made  directly  available  by  means  of  a  clearing 
house  for  such  data  in  New  York  City.  The 
league's  purposes  are :  To  give  the  man  without 
a  cent  a  chance  to  earn  the  first  payments  on  his 
farm;  to  give  the  man  who  has  no  knowledge  of 
farming  a  scientific  training;  to  help  men  to  help 
themselves.  This  work  of  hitching  up  is  just 
what  has  been  needed,  and  we  believe  the  league 
will  be  a  real  factor  in  building  up  the  United 
States. 


[254] 


XV 

MONEY   TALKS 


THE    TACTICS    OF    THOMAS 

AS  a  man  and  a  brother,  Tom,  we  like  you. 
You  are  more  generous  and  more  amus- 
ing, have  more  the  light  and  wonder  of 
the  circus  and  the  stage,  than  anyone  else 
who  plays  with  us.  For  the  exuberances 
of  your  likable  personality,  upon  any  sub- 
ject from  China  to  Peru,  this  paper  has 
an  engulfing  welcome.  It's  only  when  you 
approach  us  weaving  masks  of  flying  ticker-tape 
that  we  have  misgivings.  Of  course  we  knew, 
when  you  asked  to  jab  pens  with  us,  that  you 
were  going  to  revel  in  the  chance  to  tell  our  read- 
ers about  the  wonder  of  your  tips  on  the  market. 
And  when  we  were  guileless  enough  to  practice 
that  trite  evasion  of  "pressure  on  our  space," 
of  course,  you  knew  we  meant  that  we  didn't 
like  the  role  of  introducing  you  to  a  good  many 
thousands  of  depositors  in  savings  banks. 
Equally,  of  course,  you  knew  that  an  appeal  to 
fairness  was  the  weapon  for  the  opening  we  left. 
There  won't  be  any  bill  for  the  advertising,  Tom; 

[255] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

on  the  contrary,  you  shall  have  a  check  at  some- 
thing more  than  our  usual  rates.  But  we  hope 
the  glamour  of  your  personality  won't  daze  our 
readers,  nor  your  Anaconda  eloquence  lead  them 
into  the  very  quicksands  out  of  which  you  prom- 
ise, some  day,  with  that  mysterious  "Remedy," 
to  lead  them. 


DON'T   BUY! 

HAVE  you  bought  mining  stocks?  Sell 
them.  Offer  them  back  to  the  man  who 
sold  them.  Offer  them  at  the  same  price.  Offer 
them  at  ten  per  cent  less.  Offer  them  at  twenty 
per  cent  less.  This  will  accomplish  your  own 
disillusionment,  and  save  you  money,  for  you 
might  have  bought  more.  It  will  also  effect  ex- 
posure of  the  person  who  sold  you  the  stock. 
Are  you  thinking  of  buying  shares  in  Poodle-dog 
Inflated  or  Hoptoad  Jump  Along?  Don't.  And 
this  "don't"  is  without  qualification  of  any  kind. 
To  women  chiefly,  wives  of  husbands  of  the 
higher  wage-earning  class,  this  paragraph  is  com- 
mended. Not  that  it  is  their  folly  we  inveigh 
against.  They  are  the  ones  who  know  the  value 
of  savings,  and  they  may  be  in  time  to  save  a 
fatuous  husband  from  an  act  of  inexcusable  folly. 
If  you  are  tempted  by  the  full-page  advertise- 
ments published  by  the  newspaper  partners  of 

[256] 


MONEY     TALKS 


mining  swindlers,  don't!  If  some  acquaintance 
is  urging  you  to  buy  shares,  he  either  profits  by 
the  sale  or  is  himself  deceived.  Daniel  Guggen- 
heim is  the  greatest  miner  in  the  world.  He  and 
his  six  brothers  own  mines  that  aggregate  a  bil- 
lion dollars.  That  family  knows  more  about 
mines  than  most  of  the  rest  of  the  world  com- 
bined. The  other  day  Mr.  Guggenheim  uttered  a 
solemn  warning  against  "the  flimsy  character  of 
the  mining  stocks  now  finding  a  ready  market." 
"One  in  three  hundred,"  he  said,  "is  a  conserva- 
tive estimate  of  the  proportion  of  prospects  that 
eventually  fulfill  their  promise."  Within  a  week 
after  he  uttered  that  warning  Mr.  Guggenheim 
made  public  announcement  that  he  had  himself 
been  caught.  He  had  bought  a  famous  and 
widely  talked-of  mine;  and  when  he  discovered 
he  had  been  deceived,  he  backed  out  of  the  trap 
at  a  cash  loss  of  $2,500,000. 

When  Mr.  Guggenheim  said  one  in  three  hun- 
dred, he  referred  to  the  more  or  less  reputable 
mines  whose  shares  are  sold  on  the  regular  ex- 
changes. If  he  had  included  the  mines  whose 
shares  are  advertised  at  five  and  ten  cents  in  the 
Sunday  papers,  he  would  have  said  one  in  thirty 
thousand.  If  this  paragraph  prevents  the  swin- 
dling of  a  few  uninformed  persons,  preserves  the 
savings  of  a  few  families  from  the  adventurers 
about  to  acquire  them,  it  will  have  done  well. 


[257] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARK 


NATIONAL   AND    STATE   FINANCE 

WE  are  now  witnessing  an  event  which  is 
sure  to  follow  the  close  of  each  and  every 
Congress:  a  confused  row  as  to  how  much  money- 
was  spent,  who  spent  it  and  why,  and  what  our 
future  national  financial  situation  will  he. 
There  is  no  standard  form  of  report,  and  it  is  no 
simple  matter  to  compare  the  spending  of  each 
Congress  with  that  of  its  predecessors;  so  the 
argument  becomes  very  involved.  The  experts 
exclude  and  include  and  make  allowances  and 
come  triumphantly  to  the  end  that  they  had  in 
view  from  the  first,  viz.,  that  one  party  is  right 
and  the  other  wrong,  that  Congress  did  well  and 
that  the  Executive  did  badly,  or  vice  versa.  Now 
all  this  is  mere  partisanship.  It  may  be  that 
Democrats  are  congenitally  economical  while  Re- 
publicans are  chronically  extravagant,  or  the  re- 
verse, but  the  one  sure  fact  is  that  no  one  knows. 
No  one  is  responsible  for  the  Government's  ac- 
counts. There  are  no  accounts.  To  be  sure, 
there  are  plenty  of  records  of  different  sorts 
kept  by  the  different  departments  and  bureaus 
in  different  places  and  using  various  methods, 
but  there  is  no  one  set  of  accounts  in  which  all 
the  figures  are  summed  up,  and  there  is  no  gen- 
eral auditor  responsible  for  such  summaries.  If 
a  board  of  directors  (or  receivers)  tried  to  get  a 

[258] 


MONEY     TALKS 


view  of  our  national  finances  as  a  whole  they 
would  very  likely  go  crazy.  It  is  worse  than  idle 
to  blame  parties  when  businesslike  organization  is 
what  is  needed.  Congress  will  be  in  money 
troubles  as  long  as  it  appropriates  money  by  a 
mass  meeting  of  some  five  hundred-odd  men, 
each  of  whom  is  interested  very  keenly  in  getting 
certain  specific  amounts  spent,  while  only  a  few 
have  any  but  a  lip  interest  in  economy.  No  rail- 
road, factory,  or  other  enterprise  could  keep  sol- 
vent if  it  followed  this  course.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  States  which  use  the  same  obsolete 
methods,  and  the  condition  resulting  is  shown  in 
the  recent  absurd  argument  as  to  whether  New 
York  State  did  or  did  not  need  a  new  $18,000,000 
tax  levy. 


THE    NEXT    STEP 

AND  yet  our  National  and  State  Govern- 
ments prescribe  very  good  systems  of  ac- 
counts for  railroads  and  other  public  utilities,  and 
enforce  their  observance.  Public  opinion  must 
be  brought  to  bear  to  compel  our  governments  to 
do  the  same  thing  for  themselves.  At  present 
the  average  voter  hears  these  huge  figures  hurled 
back  and  forth,  and  gets  only  a  disgusted  im- 
pression that  both  sides  are  juggling  the  facts 
for  campaign  purposes.     This  condition  is  in- 

[259] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

tolerable.  Public  opinion  rules  our  country  in 
the  end,  but  it  cannot  rule  well  unless  it  knows. 
It  is  important  that  we  know  how  the  railroads 
get  their  money  and  what  they  do  with  it,  but  it  is 
vastly  more  important  that  we  know  clearly  how 
our  governments  get  their  money  and  whether  it 
is  well  spent,  because  the  power  to  tax  is  arbi- 
trary and  its  exercise  is  too  often  indirect.  What 
a  storm  there  would  have  been  in  New  York 
State  if  the  public  utilities  had  proposed  to  raise 
their  rates  by  $18,000,000  in  one  year!  Tax  in- 
creases are  not  so  keenly  contested  because  of 
the  vagueness  surrounding  the  whole  matter. 
The  only  way  to  get  our  work  of  government  on 
a  solid  basis  of  merit  is  to  have  clear  records 
showing  and  comparing  the  operating  facts  from 
one  administration  to  the  next.  This  can  be 
done  by  adopting  the  much-discussed  budget  sys- 
tem and  by  prescribing  governmental  accounts. 
It  will  be  done  only  when  it  becomes  impossible 
to  continue  the  present  haphazard  condition,  for 
politics  gets  very  little  nourishment  out  of  sound 
accounting.  The  problem  is  being  persistently 
studied,  and  its  solution  can  only  be  delayed,  not 
prevented.  Responsible  finance  is  the  next  great 
step  in  giving  the  American  voters  control  of 
their  government. 


[260] 


MONEY     TALK  S 


ANY    CURE    FOR    TAX    EATING? 

WE  commented  last  year  on  the  way  in 
which  Mr.  A.  V.  Donahey,  Auditor  of 
the  State  of  Ohio,  attempted  to  get  the  facts  as 
to  Ohio's  finances  into  the  hands  of  her  citizens. 
It  appears  now  that  this  attempt  was  decidedly 
successful.  The  1912  report  contained  some  900 
pages  of  endless  detail,  and  less  than  50  copies 
were  requested  out  of  an  edition  of  1,200.  The 
1913  report  was  boiled  down  to  some  250  pages 
of  usable  information,  and  an  edition  of  over 
11,000  copies  was  exhausted.  This  shows  how 
to  interest  people  in  the  actual  results  of  their 
government,  and  the  lesson  is  clear  for  every 
State  and  city  that  has  sense  enough  to  use  it. 
But  Mr.  Donahey  is  not  satisfied.  His  clear- 
cut  figures  prove  only  too  well  that  the  tend- 
ency in  Ohio,  as  elsewhere,  is  to  swell  the  gov- 
ernmental activities,  to  hide  costs  in  indirect 
taxes,  and  to  multiply  expenditures.  The  show- 
ing of  specific  facts  is  unanswerable.  Is  there 
any  remedy?  Critical,  constructive  publicity  of 
the  sort  that  Mr.  Donahey's  work  supplies  is 
the  first  requisite.  The  second  is,  probably,  to 
have  the  State  body  responsible  for  raising 
money  (preferably  such  a  body  as  the  Wisconsin 
Tax  Commission)  given  some  sort  of  limiting 
power  in  respect  to  spending  money. 

[261] 


NATIONAL     FLOOD  MARKS 


WHERE    THE    MONEY   GOES 

MR.  BRYAN,  in  his  "Letters  to  a  Chinese 
Official,"  describes  as  the  "crying  evil  of 
the  Western  World"  the  fact  that  "we  have  al- 
lowed capital  to  absorb  more  than  its  share  of 
the  products  of  human  toil."  Stated  thus  baldly, 
this  is  one  of  the  assertions  which  conservatives 
look  upon  as  radical  and  demagogic.  Yet  many 
cases  seem  to  prove  it.  To  capital  the  posses- 
sion of  any  sort  of  public  franchise  has  always 
meant  more  than  the  most  fabulously  rich  gold 
mines.  It  is  the  commonest  saying  in  the  vicinity 
of  mines  that  more  money  has  been  put  in,  in 
the  way  of  fruitless  prospecting  and  the  like, 
than  has  ever  been  taken  out.  But  rare,  indeed, 
is  the  holder  of  a  public  franchise  who  has  failed 
to  make  profits  beyond  all  ordinary  rates.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  a  man  who,  in  the  early 
nineties,  subscribed  to  one  share  of  stock  in  Mr. 
James  J.  Hill's  Great  Northern  Railway  and 
has  kept  it  ever  since  has  made,  in  the  intervening 
fifteen  years,  in  cash  dividends  and  stock  divi- 
dends and  "privileges,"  a  profit  of  over  nine  hun- 
dred per  cent.  The  best  that  could  have  been 
done  by  a  workman  on  Mr.  Hill's  railroad,  who 
put  his  earnings  in  a  savings  bank  for  the  same 
period,  would  be  less  than  one  hundred  per  cent. 
Mr.  Fobbest  F.  Deyden,  a  son  of  the  President 

[262] 


MONEY    TALKS 


of  the  Prudential  Insurance  Company,  stated 
under  oath  that  one  of  the  owners  of  that  com- 
pany who,  in  the  late  seventies,  paid  in,  in  cash, 
$2,200,  had  made  a  profit,  twenty-five  years  later, 
of  $327,163.60.  The  rate  of  profit  in  this  case  is 
14,800  per  cent — a  rate  which  must  seem  colossal 
to  the  policy-holder  who  has  taken  advantage  of 
the  savings  feature  of  that  company  and  bought 
an  endowment  policy.  For  the  policy-holder 
has  never  received  as  much  as  four  per  cent. 


A   FINE   THING 

RECENTLY  a  young  and  successful  banker 
withdrew  from  his  firm  to  accept  an  ap- 
pointment as  an  assistant  in  a  department  in  our 
oldest  university.  The  banking  career,  of  course, 
would  have  been  vastly  more  remunerative,  in 
money.  Moreover,  the  bank  was  a  family  institu- 
tion, and  there  was  every  inclination  of  pride  and 
tradition  against  leaving  it.  It  strikes  us  as  a 
fine  thing  to  have  done.  Possibly  we  would  all 
be  better  off  if  business  in  this  country  were 
less  remunerative  as  compared  with  other  ca- 
reers. If  business  did  not  offer  a  reward  so 
vastly  greater  in  money,  young  men  choosing 
their  careers  would  feel  more  free  to  follow  their 
natural  talents  toward  the  arts  or  toward  other 
careers.    One  of  the  most  successful  bankers  in 

[263] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARES 

the  United  States  would  have  been  a  very  great 
musician  if  he  had  felt  free  to  follow  his  tastes. 
In  spite  of  the  disparity  of  the  money  rewards, 
more  and  more  men  are  realizing  that  money  is 
not  to  be  weighed  against  what  President  Eliot 
once  called  "the  durable  satisfactions  of  life." 
Among  these  durable  satisfactions,  congeniality 
of  work  is  one  of  the  most  important. 


THESE   ALTERED    TIMES 

A  LOT  of  us  get  discouraged  with  the 
United  States  because  we  do  not  keep  up 
with  it.  We  hold  in  our  minds  some  depressing 
fact  or  conclusion,  and  never  stop  to  find  out 
whether  or  not  it  is  still  true.  For  example,  a 
good  many  politicians  and  some  editors  keep 
harping  away  on  the  assumption  that  all  business 
men  must  be  carefully  watched  and  regulated  lest 
they  "do"  the  community  for  their  own  benefit. 
Of  course  the  professional  Jeremiahs  are  fact 
proof,  but  the  amateurs  ought  to  note  a  certain 
change  now  going  forward.  The  editor  of  a  na- 
tional coal-trade  journal  expressed  the  matter 
very  well  when  he  pointed  out  that  a  few  years 
ago  "we  simply  gave  the  news  of  the  trade,  some 
personal  items,  a  few  editorial  paragraphs,  and 
the  like" — but  that  nowadays  his  readers  want 
practical  suggestions  on  such  points  as  these: 

[264] 


MONEY    TALKS 


"How  can  I  give  better  service?  How  can  I  re- 
duce costs  ?  How  can  I  please  the  public  better?" 
No  doubt  some  of  our  bright  young  journalists 
will  be  able  to  prove  that  a  malign  purpose  must 
animate  anyone  who  asks  such  questions,  but  the 
editor  quoted  above  claims  that  his  readers  "are 
eager  not  to  fleece  the  public,  but  to  give  more 
value,  more  service  for  a  dollar,  than  ever  be- 
fore." 

The  coal  trade  is  not  alone  in  this.  Everyone 
who  follows  the  numerous  business  and  profes- 
sional conventions  that  are  held  all  over  our 
country  every  year  must  note  that  these  are  very 
serious  affairs,  held  primarily  for  the  exchange 
of  useful  ideas,  and  that  social  and  other  forms 
of  enjoyment  are  now  altogether  secondary. 
The  hard-drinking  business  getter  is  not  what  he 
used  to  be.  The  modern  method  is  to  analyze 
the  customer's  real  needs  and  then  sell  him  what 
he  really  wants — not  what  he  can  be  wheedled 
or  bamboozled  into  buying.  The  effort  of  the 
normal  trade  or  professional  journal  is  to  in- 
crease the  usefulness  of  those  reading  it.  With 
all  its  faults,  ours  is  an  age  of  progress,  and  much 
of  it  is  progress  toward  service  and  justice.  It 
has  been  very  well  and  truly  said  that  the  promise 
of  the  twentieth  century  is  not  to  entertain  peo- 
ple nor  to  move  them  to  tears  or  laughter,  but  to 
persuade  them  to  understand. 


[265] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

THE   BASIS    OF   BUSINESS 

J  P.  MORGAN  once  testified  that  to  him 
•  character  was  the  bottom  fact  in  busi- 
ness; that  he  trusted  a  man  and  dealt  with 
him  primarily  on  that  basis.  This  aroused  a 
great  deal  of  carping  comment,  but  it  always 
seemed  plain  to  us  that  Morgan  knew  what  he 
was  saying.  And  now  we  find  the  "Wall  Street 
Journal"  predicting  the  coming  of  a  great  re- 
ligious revival  as  one  result  of  the  European  war, 
and  insisting  that  this  possibility  is  of  infinite 
concern  to  business  men.  The  "Journal"  believes 
that  nine-tenths  of  the  evils  from  which  business 
suffers  can  be  ended  by  religious  feeling,  though 
beyond  the  reach  of  law.  Religious  faith  is  a 
"better  remedy  and  a  better  promise  for  future 
business  managed  under  the  best  standards  of 
honor  and  humanity  than  anything  Congress  can 
enact  or  the  Department  of  Justice  can  enforce." 
This  is  the  final  truth  about  our  trade  and  indus- 
try, and  it  is  most  clearly  seen  and  surely  held  by 
those  who  know  most  about  business. 


OUR   OWN   WALT   MASONRY 

SAID  Farmer  Hicks:    "You  want  to  know 
just  what  my  feelings  are  for  this  new- 
fangled thingumbob  that's  called  a  motor  car? 

[266] 


MONEY     TALK  S 


Well,  friend,  I'm  glad  to  tell  yer:  I  may  be  out 
of  style,  but,  anyhow,  there's  just  one  thing  that 
always  gets  my  bile  a-bubblin'  like  thunder,  and 
that's  the  way  folks  talk,  from  down  in  San  An- 
tonio clear  over  to  New  York,  about  their  pesky 
autos,  and  all  such  stuff  as  that — how  much 
they  cost,  how  well  they  run — why,  I  can  tell  you 
flat,  I  wouldn't  give  an  old  straw  lid  or  pair  of 
cast-off  boots  for  one  o'  them  contraptious, 
smelly,  gasoline,  galoots." 

Hicks  made  these  wise  remarks  of  his  about 
a  year  ago,  but  when  I  met  him  yesterday  he 
hollered  out:  "Hello,  old  friend,  come  here  a 
minute.  I  want  to  have  you  see  the  auto  I've 
been  running.  There  ain't  but  two  or  three  in 
all  this  State  or  county  that  have  the  consarned 
crust  to  try  their  speed  with  me.  No,  sir!  They 
have  to  take  my  dust.  There  ain't  a  niftier  little 
car  in  all  this  town  than  mine;  she  does  just  what 
I  want  her  to,  the  same  in  rain  or  shine.  She's 
slick  as  any  whistle ;  she's  steady  and  she's  strong. 
Those  folks  who  till  knock  autos  are  in  all-fired 
wrong.  I've  saved  more  time,  I've  made  more 
cash,  I've  had  more  fun  by  far,  than  in  my  fifty 
years  of  life  before  I  owned  this  car.  If  any 
mossbacks  doubt  my  word,  they'd  better  stow 
their  kicks,  go  buy  a  car  and  learn  the  truth — 
as  sure  as  my  name's  Hicks  1" 


[267] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 


TIGHT-WAD   LAWMAKERS 

UP  in  Boston  the  electric  light  company  is 
modern  enough  to  construct  some  buildings 
for  the  welfare  of  its  employees.  These  buildings 
are  permanent  improvements  such  as  will  be  use- 
ful for  many  years  to  come.  The  company's 
finances  are  later  passed  upon  by  the  Board  of 
Gas  and  Electric  Light  Commissioners,  which  is 
set  up  to  look  after  the  public  interest,  and  these 
bumbles  turn  out  the  following  verdict: 

The  board  sympathizes  with  every  humane  effort  of  a 
company  in  behalf  of  its  employees,  and  recognizes  that 
its  extent  must  depend  upon  circumstances  not  readily  de- 
fined. But  when  directed  beyond  suitable  provision  for 
the  health  and  safety  of  the  employees,  and  if  so  substan- 
tial in  amount  as  to  tend  to  add  an  extra  burden  to  the 
consumer  or  to  take  from  the  stockholder  the  full  measure 
of  his  right  to  a  fair  return,  the  representation  of  such 
expenditures  in  permanent  capital  becomes  of  doubtful 
propriety. 

Stripped  of  its  hot  air,  this  means  that  the 
board  approves  welfare  work  provided  it  doesn't 
cost  anyone  very  much.  These  commissioners,  in 
denying  that  the  apparatus  for  such  work  is  a 
proper  part  of  the  capital  of  a  public  utility,  sim- 
ply show  that  they  do  not  know  what  the  welfare 
movement  means  in  health,  happiness,  efficiency, 
permanence  of  employment,  and,  therefore,  bet- 

[268] 


MONEY     TALKS 


ter  service  to  the  public.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
the  question  of  building  or  not  building  could  not 
have  been  put  squarely  up  to  the  commissioners 
for  decision.  Their  statement  has  that  unpleas- 
ing  note  of  expediency  without  responsibility 
which  is  characteristic  of  the  sham  regulator.  But 
the  betterment  of  conditions  will  go  on  just  the 
same,  for  the  people  are  backing  it,  though  the 
politicians  are  not. 


WHAT   UNEMPLOYMENT   MEANS 

MEN  out  of  work  drift  into  our  big  cities  as 
casually  and  normally  as  water  drains 
downhill.  It's  the  last  place  they  ought  to  come, 
but  that  is  what  they  do.  Probably  they  think, 
somewhat  blindly,  that  it's  the  best  place  to  hide 
during  a  period  of  hard  luck.  The  problem  then 
becomes  visible  and  organizations  are  formed  to 
solve  it.  The  situation  does  not  call  for  this  sort 
of  special  effort,  nor  charity  or  relief  of  any  sort, 
but  for  certain  changes  in  the  way  in  which  the 
work  of  modern  communities  is  carried  on.  Our 
industries  are  very  largely  run  in  close  connec- 
tion with  the  markets  which  they  supply.  The 
output  is  adjusted  as  market  conditions  change; 
the  ablest  and  shrewdest  men  try  to  see  into  the 
future  and  to  anticipate  it,  with  the  result  that 
the  amount  of  day's  work  available  in  a  given 

[269] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

town  at  any  time  fluctuates  enormously.  Along 
with  this  has  grown  up  the  notion  that  labor  is  an 
article  to  be  bought  or  not  bought  as  needed. 
Now,  the  unemployment  problem  means  that 
men  have  come  to  look  at  the  work  of  a  commun- 
ity as  a  matter  of  making  salable  goods  rather 
than  as  a  matter  of  serving  the  community's  life. 
The  way  out  is  to  get  the  men  in  immediate  eco- 
nomic authority  to  plan  for  spreading  work 
through  the  entire  year,  and  for  distributing 
slack  time  instead  of  lumping  it,  so  that  our  in- 
dustries will  be  more  nearly  continuous.  If  this 
can  be  done,  a  vast  deal  of  unemployment  will 
disappear  for  good.  New  York  City  has  made 
a  start  on  this  through  the  appointment  of  the 
Mayor's  Committee  on  Employment,  headed  by 
the  chairman  of  the  United  States  Steel  Cor- 
poration. The  men  composing  it  are  mostly  of- 
ficials in  large  companies,  and  any  action  which 
they  may  take  can  be  put  into  effect  by  means  of 
the  regular  operations  of  industry  instead  of 
by  temporary  and  artificial  makeshifts.  As 
Mr.  Henry  Bruere,  the  originator  of  the  plan, 
has  pointed  out,  it  may  be  necessary  to  supple- 
ment this  with  some  form  of  labor  insurance,  but 
the  first  step  in  preventing  unemployment  is  to 
regularize  industry.  New  York's  experience 
will  be  watched  with  interest. 


[270] 


MONEY    TALK  S 


MOBILIZING   FOR   FOREIGN    TRADE? 

IN  an  address  at  Philadelphia,  Secretary  of 
Commerce  Redfield  gives  out  this  statement 
as  to  the  possible  future  of  our  country's  foreign 
trade: 

No  one,  I  think,  would  be  surprised  to  find  the  United 
States  second  in  the  world's  competition,  nor,  if  the  war 
shall  long  continue,  be  astonished  to  find  her  first.  It 
depends,  of  course,  not  merely  on  what  is  destructively 
done  yonder,  but  on  what  is  constructively  done  here.  If 
we  are  willing  to  lay  aside  passion  and  prejudice  and  par- 
tisanship, to  look  at  things  with  an  international  instead 
of  a  parochial  viewpoint,  to  realize  that  effectiveness  is 
patriotism  and  that  inefficiency  is  unpatriotic;  if  we  are 
ready  to  give  up  inertia  and  take  a  step  forward  out  of 
ourselves  to  the  help  of  others;  if  we  remember  that  com- 
merce is  mutual  exchange  to  mutual  benefit  and  not  a  spe- 
cies of  industrial  war;  if  we  can  learn  the  lesson  that  the 
well-paid  workman  is  the  cheapest  producer  and  that 
science  must  be  applied  to  industry  if  we  are  to  win:  if 
these  things  can  be  done,  I  see  no  reason  why,  with  our 
resources  and  intelligence  and  organization,  we  may  not 
become  the  first  among  the  world's  great  trading  nations. 

This  is  good,  but  incomplete.  Secretary  Red- 
field  might  have  told  us  more  definitely  what 
he  means  by  "organization."  In  Europe  it  has 
meant  the  active  use  of  governmental  power  to 
strengthen  those  working  to  enlarge  a  given 
country's  foreign  trade.  It  has  meant  permitting 
and  encouraging  certain  forms  of  business  com- 

[271] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABKS 

bination  for  which,  in  the  United  States,  the  Gov- 
ernment tries  to  put  men  in  jail.  The  prelimi- 
nary work  of  the  Federal  Trade  Commission 
makes  this  contrast  very  clear.  Chairman  Davies 
of  this  commission  made  an  address  at  Chicago 
while  Secretary  Redfield  was  at  Philadelphia, 
and  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  these  European 
"cartels,"  as  they  are  called.  It  seems  that  Eu- 
ropean governments  permit  these  organizations 
to  fix  prices,  control  output,  and  divide  territory 
in  domestic  as  well  as  in  foreign  business,  and 
Chairman  Davies  made  the  significant  remark 
that  "it  would  be  a  confession  of  unfitness  if  this 
country  should  be  unable  to  meet  conditions  such 
as  these  in  international  trade."  This,  from  an 
ex-secretary  of  the  Democratic  National  Com- 
mittee, comes  close  to  indorsing  the  economic 
teachings  of  Mr.  George  W.  Perkins  and  the 
Progressive  party.  Thus  it  becomes  more  and 
more  evident  that  much  of  our  trade  develop- 
ment must  wait  upon  the  determination  of  our 
Government's  basic  economic  theory  regarding 
the  control  of  such  business.  The  European 
method  is  not  likely  to  change,  and  ours  must 
meet  the  resulting  conditions. 

Secretary  Redfield  and  Chairman  Davies 
must  come  to  an  agreement  if  the  United  States 
is  to  have  a  policy  that  will  get  foreign  trade. 


[272] 


XVI 
WHAT   ABOUT   BOOZE? 


THINK   IT   OVER 

IF  there  were  no  whisky  in  the  United  States 
nor  any  other  liquor  except  beer,  would 
there  be  a  prohibition  movement?  If  no 
saloons  sold  any  beverage  except  beer,  would 
there  be  an  antisaloon  movement?  The  brewers 
of  the  United  States  ought  to  think  long  and 
hard  on  these  two  questions. 


INCOME 

ONE  thousand  dollars  a  day  is  a  fairly  good 
income.  It  is  the  calculated  return  from 
the  estate  of  a  Missouri  brewer.  Now,  what 
every  tradesman  or  manufacturer  accumulates  in 
this  life  he  must  get  from  someone  else ;  and  un- 
less he  gives  value  received,  he  is  not,  no  matter 
what  his  benefactions,  a  truly  good  citizen.  Pon- 
derable arguments  may  be  advanced  for  tolerat- 
ing St.  Louis  beer,  but  what  about  whisky  and 
its  makers?    Can  any  thoughtful  or  well-mean- 

[273] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

ing  man  hand  down  to  his  children  a  fortune 
founded  on  other  people's  waste  and  debauchery 
without  a  sense  of  shame?  Can  his  wife  and 
children  be  happy  in  a  prosperity  capitalized, 
to  their  knowledge,  out  of  their  neighbors'  weak- 
nesses? This  drink  problem  is  intricate,  indeed. 
But  it  is  most  distinctly  a  social  problem,  and 
must  be  solved  by  the  exercise  of  that  social 
spirit  born  of  civilization. 


CAUGHT 

GARBLING  is  the  pettiest  form  of  literary 
chicanery.  The  sorry  pirates  who  practice 
it  generally  escape  detection  through  their  ob- 
scurity ;  but  occasionally  one  is  caught  in  the  act, 
as  in  the  instance  of  the  "News  and  Register- 
Tribune"  of  Roswell,  N.  Mex.  In  its  zeal  for 
the  liquor  interests,  this  newspaper  quotes,  giving 
credit,  an  editorial  from  Collier's,  which  it  heads, 
"Lincoln  no  Prohibitionist,"  and  which  has 
been  used  as  campaign  material  by  the  sa- 
loon politicians  of  the  State.  The  quotation  is 
accurate  except  that  it  omits  one  brief  but  signifi- 
cant passage.  From  its  mutilated  form  the 
reader  might  well  derive  the  impression  that 
Collier's  was  exploiting  Lincoln  as  an  out-and- 
out  advocate  of  the  whisky  party.  He  could 
hardly  have  supposed  this  had  the  newspaper 

[274] 


WHAT    ABOUT     BOOZE? 


misquoter  not  carefully  blue  penciled  the  follow- 
ing sentences : 

Abraham  Lincoln  believed  drink  to  be  probably  the 
greatest  single  curse  upon  the  earth.  How  it  should  be 
decreased  was  a  question  of  reason  and  experience.  If  he 
lived  to-day  our  guess  is  that  he  would,  like  most  wise  men, 
approve  of  prohibition  in  certain  neighborhoods,  condemn- 
ing it  in  others. 

Such  was  our  guess  then;  such  it  still  is.  And, 
for  a  further  surmise,  if  the  liquor  advocates  in 
New  Mexico  have  so  bad  and  weak  a  cause  that 
they  must  serve  themselves  by  such  disreputable 
journalism  as  that  of  the  "News  and  Register- 
Tribune,"  that  State  would,  in  our  opinion,  be 
one  of  the  localities  in  which  Lincoln  would  be 
found  in  the  Prohibition  ranks. 


TIMES   DO    CHANGE! 

KEEPING  guns  and  going  skating,  one 
shilling.  That  was  the  fine  Harvard  Col- 
lege imposed  by  way  of  discipline  as  late  as  1750. 
What  was  the  fine  for  dancing,  one  wonders? 
Nowadays  even  the  "modern"  dances  are  taught 
to  Harvard  students  in  the  college  "gym."  Some 
of  the  other  eighteenth-century  penalties  are 
listed  by  Mr.  A.  S.  Pier  in  his  diverting  book, 
"The  Story  of  Harvard": 

[275] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABES 

t.  d.                                               9.    d. 

Going  out  of  college  Lying,  not  exceeding     1     6 

without    proper  Going  on  top  of  the 

garb,   not   exceed-  college   ..........      1     6 

ing . .  6      Refusing  to  give  evi- 

Playing    cards,    not  dence    3 

exceeding 5  ..      Drunkenness,  not  ex- 
ceeding .........     1     6 

As  the  cartoonist  notes,  "Those  were  the  days !" 
But  to-day  college  authorities  regard  drunken- 
ness ("not  exceeding  one  shilling  sixpence")  as 
considerably  more  offensive  than  playing  cards 
("not  exceeding  five  shillings").  Even  colleges 
grow  more  intelligent,  it  seems. 


HELPS    TO    COLLEGE    TEMPERANCE 

APATHETIC  old  graduate,  signing  him- 
self '89,  has  written  the  Yale  "Daily 
News"  a  poetic  exposition  of  the  contempt  which, 
in  his  opinion,  former  Yalensians  have  for  the 
present  undergraduate  body.  The  "high  point" 
of  the  piece  is  its  melancholy  recollection  of  the 
good  old  days 

When  rolling  down  to  Mory's 

The  sweatered  seniors  came, 
Roaring  with  booze  and  victory 

After  the  Harvard  game. 
[276] 


WHAT    ABOUT     BOOZE 


New  Haven's  latter-day  degenerates  are  ac- 
cused of  drowning  their  numerous  athletic  de- 
feats in  tea.  There  are  things  too  deep  for  grief, 
as  another  poet  has  said,  and  no  doubt  "roll- 
ing down  to  Moby's"  was  a  notable  stage  in  the 
development  of  Connecticut  civilization.  It  oc- 
curs to  an  unsympathetic  bystander  that  Haugh- 
ton,  Wbay,  and  the  other  Harvard  coaches 
might  very  well  be  described  as  the  men  who 
took  the  ale  out  of  Yale.  More  power  to  them! 
There  are  many  ways  of  cutting  out  the  drink 
at  our  colleges,  and  any  method  which  does  the 
work  is  a  good  thing  for  the  future  of  the  country. 


DECADENT   DRINKERS 

OUR  drinking  population  has  become  fear- 
fully decadent.  Men  used  to  be  willing  to 
battle  for  the  drinking  privilege.  Once  the  dis- 
tillers could  count  on  an  unbreakable  phalanx  of 
booze  fighters  at  the  polls,  shouting  "Personal 
liberty  forever !"  and  full  of  the  thing  for  which 
they  voted.  Those  good  days  are  over.  The 
bartender  in  these  degenerate  times  listens  un- 
protestingly  to  prohibition  conversation  from 
serried  ranks  of  lips  moist  with  the  aromatic  cock- 
tail and  the  cool  highball.  More  horrible  still, 
the  barkeep  sometimes  drops  a  remark  showing 
that  he  is  himself  a  "prohib"  in  sympathy.    The 

[277] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

average  drinking  man  either  does  not  care  a  con- 
tinental whether  prohibition  carries,  or  plumps 
his  vote  for  it.  Antisaloon  sentiment  has  broad- 
ened tremendously.  Nobody  can  be  counted  on 
to  respond  to  the  old  wet  slogans,  simply  because 
the  number  of  Americans  who  feel  any  deep  in- 
terest in  their  grog  has  diminished  until  it  is 
practically  confined  to  the  more  recently  arrived 
foreign  element  and  to  certain  groups  with  whom 
drinking  is  a  cult.  Once  Emerson  expressed  re- 
gret at  the  fact  that  certain  great  lights  of  Eng- 
lish literature  were  frequenters  of  drinking  places 
and  passed  their  leisure  hours  in  orgies  therein. 
"Don't  be  distressed,"  said  Lowell.  "No  doubt 
their  standards  of  inebriety  were  miserably  low !" 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  rum  interests,  that's 
the  trouble  with  a  large  and  important  part  of 
our  drinking  population.  Drinking  is  no  longer, 
as  Haeey  Laudee  would  say,  a  "geeft,"  and 
considered  as  a  talent,  even,  it  is  becoming  rare. 
The  old  thirst  isn't  what  it  used  to  be. 


DROPPING   A   PARTNER 

PENNSYLVANIA  is  in  the  grip  of  a  lively 
local-option  campaign.  Local  option  in  a 
State  containing  two  very  large  cities  and  a  great 
number  of  small  ones  is  far  from  meaning  pro- 
hibition, yet  the  liquor  interests  fight  local  option 

[278] 


WHAT    ABOUT     BOOZE? 


quite  as  if  the  two  things  were  synonymous.  No- 
where in  America  has  the  alliance  between 
cynical  business  interests  and  corrupt  politicians 
with  their  booze-dealer  connections  been  closer. 
So  it  is  peculiarly  interesting  to  see  how  big  busi- 
ness lines  up  in  the  local-option  fight. 

Philadelphia  has  large  locomotive  works  and 
shipbuilding  yards;  where  do  their  directors 
stand?  Alba  B.  Johnson,  president  of  the 
Baldwin  Locomotive  Works,  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  that  "no  manufacturer  can  consistently  advo- 
cate measures  for  continuing  the  sale  of  liquor 
while  discriminating  against  men  who  use  it,  as 
the  majority  of  employers  of  labor  do."  (We 
quote  the  "Public  Ledger.")  An  officer  of  the 
Cramp  Ship  and  Engine  Building  Company 
notes  the  development  of  employers'  liability 
legislation  and  declares  that  so  many  industrial 
accidents  result  from  drinking  that  large  employ- 
ers of  labor  may  soon  have  to  refuse  to  give  work 
to  any  drinking  man.  The  general  manager  of  a 
great  manufactory  of  plumbers'  supplies  says: 
"Our  company  has  not  suffered  greatly  from 
the  use  of  liquor  among  employees  because  we 
have  weeded  out  the  alcoholically  inclined.  We 
had  to,  because  in  a  factory  filled  with  flying 
wheels  and  exposed  belting  the  worker  who  is 
not  alert  is  in  great  danger  of  being  injured." 

These  are  samples  from  interviews  with  the 
employers  of  that  one  city.    They  all  point  the 

[279] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

same  way.  This  liquor  business  is  no  longer 
solely  a  moral  issue;  it  involves  efficiency  and 
self-protection. 

Of  the  partners  in  Pennsylvania — big  busi- 
ness, politics,  and  booze — one  member  is  going  to 
be  dropped  from  the  firm. 


POETIC   JUSTICE 

ACCORDING  to  Mr.  Thomas  Dreier  of 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  when  a  man  is  found 
drunk  in  the  streets  of  Copenhagen 

he  is  placed  in  a  cab,  taken  to  the  police  station,  examined 
by  a  doctor,  and  then  sent  home  in  the  cab.  Next  morning 
the  bill  for  the  doctor  and  the  cab  is  sent  to  the  publican 
who  served  the  victim  with  his  last  drink. 

This  is  all  very  well,  but  our  smart  lawyers 
would  make  short  work  of  such  a  statute.  They 
would  prove:  First,  that  the  man  was  in  a  twi- 
light state  of  illness ;  second,  that  he  had  had  an- 
other drink  later;  third,  that  the  barkeeper  was 
trying  to  sober  him;  fourth,  that  the  fine 
amounted  to  an  unconstitutional  confiscation  of 
property;  and  fifth,  that  two  commas  were  mis- 
placed in  the  roundsman's  report  of  the  affair. 
That  cab-and-doctor  plan  may  work  very  well 
in  Copenhagen,  but  the  United  States  is  dif- 
ferent. 

[280] 


WHAT    ABOUT     BOOZE 


THE   WHOLE    STORY 

FOR  a  complete  statement  of  cause  and  effect, 
you  cannot  beat  this  headline  in  the  New 
York  "World's"  account  of  one  of  these  modern 
road-house  and  roadside  killings: 


DRUNK  UP  BY 
AUTO  PARTY  BEFORE 
GIRL  WAS  KILLED 


Booze  and  machinery  will  not  mix,  never  have 
mixed,  and  it  is  no  use  trying  to  make  them  mix. 
Ask  any  coroner. 


RAILROADS    AND    RUM 

A  CERTAIN  railroad  announces  with  par- 
donable pride  that  it  carried  last  year  on 
its  26,000  miles  of  track  188,411,876  passengers 
— and  not  one  of  these  passengers  was  killed  in 
a  train  accident.  "That,"  says  the  Canton 
(Ohio)  "Daily  News,"  "is  one  of  the  biggest 
zeroes,  one  of  the  mightiest  noughts,  that  the 
year  has  to  boast  of."  Another  newspaper,  the 
Butler  (Pa.)  "Citizen,"  writes:  "There  is  no 
doubt  whatever  that  this  condition  was  rendered 
possible  only  by  the  company's  insisting  on  strict 
sobriety  on  the  part  of  its  employees.     With 

[281] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

drunken  engineers,  drunken  dispatchers,  and 
drunken  conductors,  accidents  and  deaths  would 
have  been  common."  Drinking  on  the  part  of 
employees  used  to  cost  their  employers  a  lot  of 
money  one  way  or  another.  Nowadays  it  only 
costs  the  railroad  man  his  job. 


THE    STORY    OF    ONE    TOWN 

COATESVILLE  is  the  town  in  eastern 
Pennsylvania  that  most  people  heard  of  for 
the  first  time  when  a  mob  raided  the  hospital, 
took  a  negro  murderer  from  his  cot  there,  and 
burned  him  alive.  Yet  the  people  who  live  there 
are  not,  at  most  times,  very  different  from  those 
in  other  American  towns.  No  one  was  punished 
for  that  hideous  lynching,  but  a  county  judge 
got  back  at  Coatesville  by  withdrawing  the  liquor 
licenses.  Later,  the  Chester  County  Grand  Jury 
noted  a  marked  decrease  in  crime.  Says  the 
Grand  Jury: 

The  debasing  influence  of  the  saloon  has  been  so  ap- 
parent in  a  majority  of  the  cases  that  we  feel  compelled  to 
make  the  observation  that  the  general  public  must  pay  the 
price  for  permitting  the  existence  of  these  highly  objec- 
tionable sources  of  crime. 

After  almost  a  year  of  drought,  the  merchants 
of  Coatesville  are  outspoken  in  declaring  that  the 

[282] 


WHAT    ABOUT     BOOZE 


closing  of  their  five  saloons  has  not  been  the  detri- 
ment they  feared.  It  has  boosted  business.  The 
local  trust  company  has  had  more  deposits  than 
ever  before  in  its  history.  The  1913  Christmas 
funds  of  this  trust  company  and  of  the  national 
bank  (made  up  of  small  deposits  during  the  year, 
drawn  out  for  Christmas  money)  amounted  to 
over  $50,000.  More  small  accounts  were  opened 
than  ever  before.  Though  the  mills  which  em- 
ploy most  of  the  inhabitants  have  not  greatly 
prospered,  no  one  seems  particularly  hard  up — 
tariff  or  no  tariff.  Three  or  four  businesses, 
however,  have  really  suffered  from  the  closing 
of  the  Coatesville  saloons:  the  charity  business 
— there  haven't  been  so  many  "cases"  to  cover; 
the  police  business — there  haven't  been  so  many 
arrests  to  make;  and  a  few  side  lines,  like  wife 
beating,  murder,  and  burning  negroes  alive. 


THE  MAN  WHO  MADE  MONEY  OUT  OF  IT 

ONE  November  night  John  Nance  went  to 
Spokane  from  his  home  in  the  outskirts  and 
bought  three  one-gallon  jugs,  one  of  whisky  and 
two  of  alcohol.  He  consumed  all  the  whisky  on 
the  way  home  (all  he  didn't  spill) ,  and  once  there 
set  to  work  with  his  brother  Mitch  on  the  two 
gallons  of  alcohol.  In  the  drunken  quarrel  which 
soon  broke  out  John  was  instantly  killed,  and 

[283] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

his  brother  Mitch  was  placed  on  trial  for  the 
crime.  Here  is  part  of  a  letter  about  it  which  we 
have  received  from  John  A.  Houston  of 
Spokane: 

Yesterday  I  sat  in  the  court  where  Mitch  Nance  is  on 
trial  for  murder.  By  his  side  sits  his  wife,  bowed  with 
grief,  while  in  his  arms  coos  and  plays  his  infant  son,  born 
since  the  father's  arrest.  Only  one  more  victim  of  this 
hellish  traffic,  but  to  my  last  day  I  will  remember  that  little 
family — the  father  on  trial  for  killing  his  brother,  the 
wife  and  mother  crushed  and  numbed  with  grief,  the  baby 
wondering  why  its  daddy  is  so  solemn — and  whisky  did  it 
all.  But  why  not  make  the  man  who  manufactured  the 
whisky  and  the  man  who  sold  it  also  suffer  for  the  murder 
of  John  Nance? 

The  liquor  was  purchased  from  a  saloon  keeper 
in  Spokane  who  blatantly  advertises:  "If  your 
children  need  shoes  don't  buy  booze."  And  yet 
we  do  not  feel  as  bitter  against  this  saloon  keeper 
as  toward  the  man  who  supplies  him  with  bad 
whisky.  Probably  he  is  some  highly  respected 
citizen  whose  wife  is  one  of  our  best  people  and 
whose  check  book  is  at  the  service  of  so-called 
charity.  The  law  may  better  conditions  in  some 
respects,  but  whether  it  is  bad  "booze"  or  poison- 
ous patent  medicines  that  are  dispensed,  the  only 
way  really  to  accomplish  anything  is  to  bring 
shame  into  partnership  with  the  man  who  makes 
money  out  of  it. 


XVII 
SHOP   TALK 


ON    BREAKING    INTO    COLLIER'S 

EDITORS  sometimes  wonder  why  an  offer 
of  special  prizes  for  stories  draws  manu- 
scripts from  a  vast  number  of  persons  who 
have  never  written  professionally,  persons  who 
indeed  often  show  unfamiliarity  with  the  pen 
as  an  instrument  of  any  kind  of  communication. 
Various  letters  received  at  this  office  on  the  sub- 
ject of  our  Prize  Contest  throw  light  on  this 
point.  It  is  the  anonymity  of  all  the  contestants, 
the  chance  for  all  the  writers  concerned  to  make 
an  equal  start  on  the  crack  of  the  pistol,  that 
raises  hope  in  those  who  think  there  is  no  hope 
for  their  unknown  names  on  ordinary  occa- 
sion. One  correspondent  goes  so  far  as  to  urge 
anonymity  of  residence.  He  suggests  that  the 
postmarks  on  all  the  envelopes  received  be  ob- 
literated, so  that  writers  resident  in  such  literary 
centers  as  Boston,  New  York,  and  Indianapolis 
may  enjoy  no  handicap  at  the  expense  of  story- 
tellers hailing  from  Kokomo,  Red  Oak,  and  Bel- 
lows Falls.     This  is  madness.    Editors  may  be 

[285] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

silly,  but  if  they  were  so  silly  as  our  correspond- 
ent imagines  they  could  not  keep  their  magazines 
off  the  rocks  a  year's  time.  We  recognize  in  this 
office  and  are  on  guard  against  influences  that 
tend  to  bring  certain  groups  of  writers  and  cer- 
tain kinds  of  stories  into  undue  prominence — in- 
fluences from  behind  the  scenes.  We  think  some 
editors  succumb  unduly  to  such  tendencies  to  get 
in  a  groove.  Yet  a  study  of  the  current  maga- 
zines will  at  any  time  reveal  the  names  of  a  large 
proportion  of  newcomers.  We  in  Collier's  office 
are  continually  on  guard  against  the  dry  rot  of 
"professionalism,"  striving  to  please,  not  primar- 
ily the  literati,  but  intelligent  folk — folk  too  in- 
telligent to  be  treated  with  names  alone,  and  more 
appreciative  of  a  good  "first  story"  than  of  an  in- 
ferior story  signed  by  a  well-known  name.  Col- 
lier's has  published  a  number  of  "first  stories" 
lately,  among  them  Miss  Sawyer's  "Paddy  the 
Gander,"  Mr.  Whitfield's  "Taking  Life,"  Mrs. 
Davis's  "Geraldine's  Education,"  and  "A  Quiet 
Life,"  by  Herbert  Test.  Two  others — "The 
Angel,"  by  R.  N.  Wall,  and  "Helen  Duffy  of 
Troy,"  by  Edmond  McKenna — are  to  appear 
soon.  Probably  within  a  month  or  two  we  have 
published  or  bought  still  others  without  knowing 
it,  their  authors!  not  happening  to  give  us  the  in- 
formation, and  no  one  in  this  office  knowing  any- 
thing about  it  one  way  or  the  other. 

[286] 


SHOP     TALK 


COLLIER'S   IS   UNJUST 

ONE  of  the  best  magazine  stories  published 
in  1914  was  James  W.  Fitzpateick's 
prize  story  in  Collier's,  called  "The  Hospital 
Ticket."  We  should  like  to  print  on  this  page 
some  of  the  letters  we  have  had  about  this  story, 
including  the  indignant  one  asserting  that  the 
man  who  wrote  it  is  no  author  at  all,  but  (so 
perfect  is  the  local  color)  a  "woods  boss."  "The 
Hospital  Ticket,"  written  about  lumber-camp 
life  in  the  good  old,  rough  old  times,  has  for  its 
scene  a  town  in  Minnesota — Bemidji — and  now 
listen  to  the  Bemidji  "Pioneer": 

Collier's  Weekly,  in  publishing  the  five-hundred-dollar 
prize  story,  "The  Hospital  Ticket,"  dealt  Bemidji  a  severe 
blow  and  in  a  most  unjust  manner,  and  its  editor  should 
not  delay  in  informing  subscribers,  and  they  total  about 
one  million,  of  the  true  conditions  which  now  surround  this 
city. 

Come,  brother,  do  not  be  like  the  rest  of  them. 
It  seems  to  be  impossible  for  anyone  to  write 
a  good  story  and  give  it  a  local  place  and  habi- 
tation without  stepping  on  tender  toes.  Why  be 
offended  because  Mr.  Fitzpatrick  tells  about 
Tickle-the-Wood-Box  and  his  fish-berry 
knockout  drops?  It  is  a  good  story,  isn't  it? 
Several  of  those  "one  million"  subscribers  had 

*    [287] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

never  heard  of  Bemidji  at  all  till  Mr.  Fitz- 
pateick  came  through  with  his  story,  so  have  a 
heart  I  However,  according  to  the  "Pioneer," 
the  Bemidji  of  to-day  has  "paved  streets,  beauti- 
ful lakes,  wonderful  scenic  surroundings,  and 
substantial  homes  and  business  blocks,"  and  has 
been  selected  "as  the  proper  place  for  a  Sixth 
Normal  School."  Bemidji  to-day  is  dry.  So 
much  the  better  for  the  editor  of  the  "Pioneer" 
and  the  editor  of  the  "Sentinel" — but  will  Be- 
midji ever  be  the  scene  of  another  story  half  so 
exhilarating  as  "The  Hospital  Ticket"? 


ON    SPELLING   AS   YOU   PLEASE 

THE  recurrence  in  our  correspondence  of 
letters  in  which  "thru,"  "bot,"  and  some- 
times "husht"  and  "diminisht,"  and  the  like,  are 
seen  reminds  us  of  the  fact  that  the  flag  of  spell- 
ing reform  is  still  nailed  to  some  faithful  masts. 
May  not  the  whole  matter  be  solved  by  applying 
the  doctrines  of  the  philosophical  anarchists? 
Why  observe  any  laws  in  spelling?  Why  not 
throw  down  all  regulations  ?  Mr.  Samuel  Wel- 
ler  told  the  court  that  the  spelling  of  his  name 
depended  upon  the  taste  and  fancy  of  the  speller. 
Sam  is  the  true  reformer,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  true  conservative.  In  the  spacious  times  of 
great  Elizabeth,  spelling  was  altogether  a  mat- 

[288] 


SHOP     TALK 


ter  of  taste  and  fancy.  There  was  no  need  for 
the  Elizabethan  child  to  pore  over  the  spelling 
book.  As  he  pronounced,  he  spelled.  John 
Lyly — he  of  euphuistic  fame — wrote  "neyther." 
Why  should  not  the  Bostonian  write  "neyther" 
now,  and  the  Chicagoan  "neether"?  The  dif- 
ference would  disclose  to  the  historian  of  the 
future  one  of  the  last  vestiges  of  local  color  in 
American  life.  We  are  glad  to  know  that  Mar- 
lowe sounded  the  "b"  in  "Tamburlaine."  Why 
should  not  the  man  from  Posey  County  be  per- 
mitted without  reproach  to  disclose  his  "r"  in 
"dorg"?  We  don't  know  whether  to  write 
"Wiclif,"  "Wyclif,"  "Wyckliffe,"  or  any  one 
of  several  other  ways,  but  we  do  know  that  he 
put  in  his  Bible  "In  the  biggynnynge  Godde  cre- 
ated." He  probably  spelled  his  own  name  in 
different  ways  at  various  times.  It  is  cast  up 
against  Shakespeare  that  he  didn't  know  how  to 
spell  his  own  name.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
was  no  established  way.  Wyckliffe  spells 
Judea  "Judee."  Probably  he  pronounced  it  in 
that  way,  as  did  Hose  a  Biglow.  Caxton  refers 
to  "the  generall  destruccyon  of  the  grete  Troy," 
and  we  know  perfectly  well  what  he  means.  In 
the  olden  time  we  had  initiative  and  originality  in 
literature  as  well  as  in  spelling.  The  present  uni- 
formity in  orthography  is  a  badge  of  slavery — 
slavery  to  the  printed  page,  to  Noah  Webster 
and  Dr.  Worcester.     Spellers  of  the  English- 

[289] 


NATIONAL     FLOOD MARKS 

speaking  world,  arise!    You  hav  nuthing  to  lose 
but  your  chanes,  and  a  werld  to  gane ! 


OH,  SHUCKS! 

ONCE  in  a  blue  moon  we  take  an  editorial 
day  off  from  that  stern  schoolmistress, 
Logic.  And  it  is  on  this,  our  day  of  heresy,  that 
we  receive  a  too  intelligent  inquiry  from  a  cor- 
respondent who  writes,  apropos  of  our  defense 
of  tobacco: 

Won't  you  please  toss  this  factor  onto  one  pan  of  your 
"balances"  and  supply  for  the  other  pan  an  equally  logical 
reason  why  mother,  wife,  sister,  and  daughter  should  not 
enjoy  "the  benefit  of  recurrent  pleasure,  the  benefit  of  that 
subtle  and  philosophical  calm  which  helps  to  dissipate  petty 
troubles  and  annoyances  with  smoke  as  it  rises,  fades,  and 
is  gone"? 

No ;  we  won't.  In  fact,  we  can't.  There  isn't 
a  logical  reason  on  the  premises  to  fit  the  case. 
If  man  may  smoke,  so,  logically,  may  woman. 
Moreover,  she  does,  in  increasing  numbers ;  gen- 
erally a  cigarette.  But  if  she  can  smoke  a  ciga- 
rette with  propriety,  there  is  no  reason  why, 
logically,  she  shouldn't  smoke  a  cigar,  a  meer- 
schaum, a  clay  pipe,  a  hookah;  or  why,  we 
painedly  suppose,  she  shouldn't  chew  a  plug. 

[290] 


SHOP    TALK 


YET  (and  we  print  this  qualifying  word  in  em- 
phatic type)  we  would  much  rather  she  didn't. 
Most  illogically,  it  is  true,  but  most  powerfully. 
We  may  be  fubby  conservatives,  soulless  reac- 
tionaries, fossils,  stultified  mummies,  Pagans 
suckled  in  a  creed  outworn,  contemporaries  in 
thought  with  Rameses  or  Tiglath-Pileser;  but 
the  sight  of  any  one  of  several  hundred  women 
whom  we  know  and  admire  walking  down  the 
street  with  a  pipe  between  her  lips  would  go  far 
toward  reconciling  us  to  ground  glass  in  our 
soup.  It  may  be  unreasonable,  it  may  be  illogi- 
cal, it  may  be  unjust  and  indefensible  to  the  last 
degree,  this  feeling.  But  it's  there!  Amid  the 
crash  of  dogmas  and  the  wreck  of  creeds  we  shall 
be  found,  at  the  last,  passionately  upholding  the 
thesis  that  what's  sauce  for  the  gander  is  not 
always  and  of  necessity  sauce  for  the  goose. 


A    FRIEND    WHO    STICKS 

FROM  a  big  hotel  in  Washington  comes  a 
letter  to  the  editor,  suggesting  that  Collier's 
discuss  the  operation  of  the  Workmen's  Compen- 
sation Law  in  Ohio.  "Every  day  about  four 
hundred  claims  are  settled  under  the  provisions 
of  this  law,"  runs  the  letter,  "and  the  scale  of 
compensation  is  higher  than  in  any  other  State, 
and  yet  the  employers  are  beginning  to  under- 

I291] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARK8 

stand  that  the  cost  to  them  is  less  than  it  was 
on  the  old  plan."  There  are  details  in  this  let- 
ter that  we  have  not  room  for  here,  but  this  is 
the  way  the  last  paragraph  runs: 

I  am  an  old  resident  of  Columbus,  with  offices  at  8  East 
Broad  Street,  but  am  detained  here  on  account  of  illness. 
I  am  also  a  subscriber  to  Collier's  Weekly,  and  have  read 
it  since  the  first  number,  which  I  bought  at  L.  C.  Collin's 
news  stand,  on  South  High  Street  in  Columbus. 

Collier's  Weekly  has  been  published  under  this 
name  only  since  1895;  it  is  possible  Mr.  Claude 
Meeker,  in  referring  to  having  read  Collier's 
since  the  first  number,  has  in  mind  the  weekly 
newspaper  called  "Once  a  Week,"  the  acorn  from 
which  Collier's  oak  tree  has  grown.  Who  else 
has  read  this  magazine  every  week  since  1888? 


FROM    THE    MORNING'S    MAIL 

SOMETIMES  we  like  to  yield  the  floor  to 
one  of  our  friendly  correspondents: 

Spokane,  Wash. 
I  delight  in  your  editorial  references  to  Emerson  and 
to  the  friendship  of  good  books  that  have  stood  the  acid 
test  without  tarnishing.  The  editorial  sugar-plum  seems 
particularly  sweet  after  the  spanking  of  some  of  your  other 
comments.  I  also  love  to  dig  a  fossil  remnant  out  of  the 
near  past  and  to  compare  it  to  existing  forms  as  a  means 

[292] 


SHOP     TALK 


of  measuring  the  speed  and  quality  of  present-day  prog- 
ress. An  editorial  by  the  Rev.  Davis  W.  Clark,  D.D.,  in 
the  "Ladies'  Repository"  for  April,  1853,  touches  upon 
two  editorial  items  of  a  recent  Collier's: 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — We  spent  an  hour,  not  many 
evenings  since,  listening  to  a  "lecture"  from  this  celebrated 
pantheist.  Were  peculiarly  struck  at  the  self-complacent 
and  oracular  manner  of  the  lecturer.  He  seemed  to  regard 
himself  as  the  very  embodiment  of  all  reason.  This  at  first 
offended  our  sense  of  propriety.  When,  however,  we  came 
to  reflect  that  this  man,  according  to  his  own  theory,  is 
God — "a  manifestation  of  the  Infinite  in  finite  forms" — 
our  wonder  ceased.  Why  should  not  a  man  who  conceives 
himself  to  be  a  part  of  God  be  oracular?  This  modern 
divinity,  however,  does  not  appear  to  have  many  features 
of  resemblance  to  Jesus  Christ.  Were  rather  pleased  at 
the  thin  attendance.  .  .  .  For  a  long  time  these  two  men — 
Emerson  and  Parker — have  been  sowing  "dragon's  teeth" 
upon  the  soil  of  America.  Were  the  result  "armed  men," 
we  should  have  comparatively  little  reason  to  fear. 

It  is  pleasant  to  hear  from  Mr.  H.  C.  Haze- 
lett,  who  sends  us  this  letter  and  this  quotation 
from  the  "Ladies'  Repository"  of  sixty-one  years 
ago.  It  is  well,  too,  to  be  reminded  of  the  failure 
many  people  make  to  recognize  good  encount- 
ered at  first  hand.  All  of  us  are  broad-minded 
about  Emerson  and  his  heterodoxies  to-day;  our 
narrowness  is,  in  the  main,  reserved  for  our  own 
contemporaries. 


[293] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


THE    OMNISCIENT    ONE 

\\  715  have  always  felt  safe.  If  by  any  un- 
V  V  happy  chance — Mexican  invasion,  small- 
pox, or  act  of  God — we  were  cut  off  in  our  prime, 
there  would  be  a  man  to  step  right  in  and  fill 
our  shoes  to  overflowing:  the  proofreader.  Now, 
the  careless  reader  might  infer  that  this  is  irony ; 
that  we  are  trying  to  "get  even"  because  the 
proofreader  "queries"  our  colloquialisms  on  the 
galley  proof;  underlines  the  words  when  we 
write  "Can  you  beat  it?"  or  "low-brow,"  and, 
with  gentle  reproachfulness,  writes  "slang"  in  the 
margin.  But  it  is  not  irony.  The  proofreader 
is  an  abler  man  than  we.  Whether  he  has  read 
more  books,  we  know  not ;  he  seems  to  remember 
more  of  them  by  name  or  to  remember  those 
names  more  correctly.  Dates  and  figures  are 
our  plague,  but  the  proofreader  has  them  all  cold. 
Once  we  came  within  an  ace  of  making  out  Char- 
lotte Bronte  to  be  Jane  Austen's  contempo- 
rary; it  was  the  proofreader  who  saved  us  from 
that  disgraceful  error.  The  proofreader  is  a  su- 
perior grammarian;  he  carries  round  the  rules 
for  "should"  and  "would"  in  his  head,  whereas 
we  must  always  consult  A.  S.  Hill's  "Principles 
of  Rhetoric"  in  complicated  cases.  Either  the 
proofreader  is  cleverer  than  we  are  with  the 
"World  Almanac"  or  he  has  a  miraculous  mem- 

[294] 


SHOP     TALK 


ory  for  Congressmen's  middle  names  and  the  way 
to  distribute  French  accents.  The  proofreader 
knows  the  score  of  yesterday's  baseball  game, 
the  time  the  sun  got  up  this  morning,  and  the 
probable  result  of  to-morrow's  vote  on  the  River 
and  Harbor  Bill.  He  knows  the  more  essen- 
tial facts  of  Assyriology,  bacteriology,  and  cera- 
mics ;  he  is  not  ignorant  of  the  xanthoptera,  Yid- 
dish, and  zanyism.  We  have  a  high  regard  for 
the  proofreader;  it  is  he  who  saves  us  from  mak- 
ing more  breaks  than  we  do.  The  proofreader 
is  much  more  critical  than  any  of  our  other 
friends;  we  are  sure  of  one  reader  at  least,  and 
are  duly  grateful;  thanks  to  him,  we  mind  our 
postminimi  and  our  quadrates. 


OUR  MOST  FAITHFUL  READER 

MR.  WHITE  has  left  us.  When  we 
missed  him  the  other  day  they  told  us 
he  had  to  leave  hurriedly  because  the  Govern- 
ment unexpectedly  required  him  to  enter  at  once 
upon  his  homestead  claim  in  Washington  State, 
and  so  he  started  across  the  continent  with  only 
twelve  hours'  notice.  He  had  been  with  Col- 
lier's for  twenty-six  years,  all  that  time  as  proof- 
reader, and  head  proofreader  for  the  last  ten. 
Heaven  only  knows  how  many  errors  of  ours  he 
caught.     When  we  wrote  "woollen,"  he  wrote 

[295] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

on  the  margin  of  the  proof,  "Standard  Dictionary- 
spells  with  one  !•' "  If  we  wrote  "Saturday, 
July  4,  1776,"  the  proof  would  come  back  with 
a  pencil  observation,  "July  4,  1776,  was  Thurs- 
day." Long  devotion  to  the  business  of  being 
strictly  accurate  had  developed  in  him  a  gentle 
but  determined  opposition  to  our  occasional 
lapses  from  literalness.  To  be  sure,  he  was  not 
infallible.  We  blush  even  yet  when  we  think 
of  that  old  Collier  edition  of  Browning  in  which 
these  two  lines  are  supposed  to  rime: 

Lest  you  should  think  he  never  could  recapture 
That  first  fine  careless  rupture. 

Sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  crowded  composing- 
room  and  bending  close  over  his  desk,  Mr. 
White  had  read,  in  the  course  of  his  work, 
every  word  of  Dickens  probably  twenty  times ; 
Shakespeare,  line  by  line,  over  and  over  again; 
and  so  of  Balzac,  Thackeray,  and  many  other 
great  authors.  It  is  a  big  and  sudden  change 
of  environment  to  an  apple  ranch  on  the  Pacific 
Coast ;  but  the  home,  and  forty  acres  of  his  own, 
will  be  the  consummation  of  an  intelligent  ambi- 
tion which  other  city  men  well  might  emulate. 


[296] 


SHOP     TALK 


THE   BEST 

THE  fiction  we  publish  serves  to  pass  the 
time;  the  articles  on  politics  and  personali- 
ties and  current  conditions  have  dynamic  power; 
these  paragraphs  express  our  reflections  on  the 
passing  show.  But  neither  Collier's  nor  any- 
other  magazine  offers  in  itself  alone  a  substi- 
tute for  the  best  in  permanent  literature.  Late 
at  night,  when  the  house  is  still,  we  choose  from 
the  bookshelf  a  volume  of  Emerson,  and  spend 
an  hour  with  the  enduring  problems  and  achieve- 
ments of  life.  We  reread  the  essays  or  cut  the 
crisp  pages  of  the  newly  published  "Journal." 
Emerson  is  not  the  most  original  of  thinkers — 
but  he  dwarfs  the  sages  of  modern  journalism. 


[297] 


XVIII 
HERE   ARE   LADIES 


MATCHING   THE   MEN 

EORGE  ELIOT'S  Mrs.  Poysee  said: 
"There  was  no  denying  the  women  were 
fools ;  God  made  'em  to  match  the  men." 


G 


THE    GOLDEN    HOUR 


PSYCHOLOGISTS  have  scrutinized  it, 
philosophers  have  discoursed  upon  it, 
cynics  have  sneered  at  it,  bigots  have  thundered 
against  it,  artists  have  painted  it,  poets  have 
rhapsodized  over  it.  Yet  no  one  has  ever  com- 
pletely caught  it — this  hour  of  radiant  girlhood. 
And  naturally  enough,  for  it  is  the  most  intangi- 
ble and  fleeting  hour  in  all  life.  It  marks  the 
passing  forever  of  the  days  of  dear  mud  pies  and 
dolls.  And  a  great  poet  has  hinted  that  with 
the  relinquishment  of  childhood  come  the  shades 
of  the  prison  house.  But  was  he  not  wrong? 
Is  not  rather  this  young  girlhood  the  span  which 
seems  to  catch  and  mingle  for  one  magic  in- 

[298] 


HERE     ARE    LADIES 


stant  the  unreasoning  blitheness  of  childhood 
with  the  tenderness  of  maturity?  And  the  vivid 
and  vital  young  girl  herself — what  shall  be  said 
of  her?  Shall  one  emphasize  the  mere  external 
details — the  lengthening  of  dresses  and  the  loop- 
ing up  of  hair,  or  the  host  of  interchanged  con- 
fidences with  girl  friends,  or  the  comradeships 
with  boys  which  now  suddenly  become  tinged 
with  all  manner  of  moonshine  and  innocent  co- 
quetries, or  the  romantic  dreams,  or  the  first 
actual  romance — in  truth,  a  passing  trifle,  but 
filling  the  sky  for  the  moment  and  never  quite 
forgotten?  No  one  of  those  will  make  the  pic- 
ture: it  needs  a  little  of  all.  Neither  poet  nor 
pedant  can  analyze  the  fragrant  charm  of  girl- 
hood, and  in  that  very  fact  lies  the  real  secret  of 
its  charm.  Surely  here  is  the  quintessence  of  all 
living  beauty,  this  golden  instant  when  the 
dreams  of  youth  come  their  nearest  to  fulfill- 
ment. By  the  mere  sight  of  it  the  whole  work- 
aday world  is  enriched. 


ON    GOING   COURTING 

IN  Boston  they  talk  about  "limiting  by  law 
the  length  of  courtship."  A  bill  fixing  two 
years  as  the  maximum  legal  limit  of  engagements 
is,  says  the  dispatch,  scheduled  for  appearance 
in  the  Great  and  General  Court  of  that  great 

[299] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

grandiloquent  Commonwealth.  Everyone  knows 
that  the  proportion  of  males  to  females  is  pe- 
culiarly inadequate  in  Massachusetts — hence  the 
stir  on  Beacon  Hill  over  the  term  of  wooing. 
"If  they  can't  marry  all  of  us,"  one  seems  to 
hear  some  philandering  spinster  explaining  in  the 
lunch  room  of  the  Educational  and  Industrial 
Union  in  Boylston  Street,  "they  can  anyway  give 
each  of  us  a  turn  at  being  engaged." 

It  is,  all  the  same,  a  grave  subject.  Being  en- 
gaged is  in  some  ways  more  serious  than  being 
married.  Personally,  we  reckon  two  years  rather 
too  long  a  time  to  allow  by  law.  Mrs.  Kath- 
leen Norris,  author  of  "Mother,"  thinks  six 
months  long  enough — "if  a  young  man  calls  two 
or  three  times  a  week  during  that  period."  But 
is  it  possible  that  marriages  ever  result  when  he 
calls  so  often?  It  is  risking  a  good  deal — letting 
one's  sweetheart  know  one  that  well  before  it's  too 
late.  But  that  is  a  side  issue.  Engagements 
were  never  all  of  man's  making,  and  are  less  so 
than  ever  at  the  present  time.  Though  the  pa- 
rental referendum  has  passed  into  innocuous 
desuetude,  the  girl  in  the  case  has  the  initiative 
nowadays,  just  as  she  has  always  had  the  re- 
call. Perhaps  the  high  cost  of  amusements  may, 
in  our  larger  cities,  serve  to  shorten  such  court- 
ships as  it  does  not  wholly  wreck.  Certainly 
a  new  law  is  not  called  for  here — new  light  being 
quite  another  matter. 

[300] 


HERE     ARE     LADIES 


By  the  way,  at  just  what  stage  does  courting 
begin,  anyway? 


A   PLEA   FOR    STEW 

WRITING  in  a  daily  newspaper,  Mrs. 
Christine  Frederick  asks  why  we 
Americans  haven't  any  national  dish.  The 
Italian  has  spaghetti,  the  Hungarian  cooks  his 
goulash,  the  Russian  offers  us  his  shchee  and 
borsh,  the  Frenchman  brings  the  pot-au-feu  and 
all  the  ragouts,  but  if  you  ask  Yankees  what 
their  national  dish  is,  one  will  say  "corn  pone'* 
(leave  out  the  sugar!),  another  "turkey  and 
fixin's,"  a  third — horror  of  horrors! — "Boston 
baked  beans." 

People  talk  about  the  high  cost  of  living 
— one  explanation  is  the  fact  that  America  has 
no  national  stew.  Mrs.  Charlotte  Perkins 
Gilman,  lecturer  on  "The  Larger  Feminism," 
prophesies  that  private  cookery  is  going  out 
anyhow,  and  that  we  shall  soon  regard  cook 
stoves  as  no  more  modern  than  the  Puritan 
mother's  spinning  wheel.  Perhaps.  And  yet 
if  we  can  only  arrive  at  that  degree  of  civiliza- 
tion which  expresses  itself  in  a  good  stew  we 
shall  indefinitely  postpone  Mrs.  Gilman's  mil- 
lennium of  community  kitchens  and  homes  with- 
out housework. 

[301] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 


WHAT   WOMEN    EXPECT 

IN  his  able  report  on  "Prostitution  in  Europe," 
Abraham  Flexner  gives  this  explanation 
of  an  evil  situation  which  the  suffragists  wish 
to  change: 

Europe  has  been  a  man's  world — managed  by  men  and 
largely  for  men,  for  cynical  men  at  that — men  inured  to 
the  sight  of  human  inequalities,  callous  as  to  the  value  of 
lower-class  life,  and  distinctly  lacking  in  respect  for 
womanhood,  especially  that  of  the  working  classes. 

One  is  grateful  that  this  cynical  attitude  on 
the  part  of  men  holds  less  true  in  America. 
A  mid- Western  weekly  sheds  an  illuminative  ray 
on  this  question  in  telling  of  a  Bohemian  who 
remarked:  "I  would  not  marry  an  American 
girl!  They  expect  a  man  to  be  true  to  them!" 
The  American  wife  does  take  marriage  seriously; 
she  does  expect  her  husband  to  be  true  to  her. 
More  than  anything  else,  this  expectation  of 
hers  tends  to  make  the  man  regard  intentional 
infidelity  as  something  preposterous.  The  sur- 
est way  for  woman  to  be  held  at  a  high  valua- 
tion is  for  her  to  desire  and  claim  such  a  valua- 
tion. 


[302] 


HERE     ARE     LADIES 


THE  MILITANTS  AND  "SEX  ANTAGONISM" 

THE  difference  between  fanaticism  and 
heroism  is  largely  a  matter  of  success.  If 
the  leader  of  a  rebellion  against  tradition  or 
government  succeeds  in  establishing  the  princi- 
ple for  which  he  commits  outrages  against  the 
public  calm,  he  is  acclaimed  by  posterity  as  a 
hero  and  a  martyr.  If  he  fails,  he  is  remem- 
bered, when  at  all,  as  a  slightly  deranged  per- 
son who  ought  to  have  been  put  in  a  sanatorium 
and  treated  for  neurasthenia.  The  present  meth- 
ods of  Mrs.  Pankhurst  and  her  followers  will 
be  judged  in  the  future  by  their  results.  The 
question  is  not  one  of  ethics,  but  of  efficiency. 
In  America,  where  coeducation,  democracy,  and 
the  good-fellowship  of  the  West  have  developed 
a  sympathetic  comradeship  between  the  sexes 
which  is  equaled  nowhere  else  in  the  world  save 
possibly  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  understand  the  form  of  protest  in  which 
these  women  are  indulging.  It  seems  to  us  that 
such  methods  only  make  more  difficult  the  at- 
tainment of  the  suffrage,  or  any  other  end.  But 
the  English  gentleman,  who  is  the  law  giver, 
is  not  so  open  to  conviction  on  questions  which 
seriously  affect  his  ideas  of  the  fitness  of  things. 
He  stands  by  his  prejudices  as  he  does  by  his 
guns  or  his  principles,  and  it  may  be  that  Mrs. 
Pankhurst  is  right  in  her  declaration  that  mili- 

[303] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

tant  methods  are  the  only  ones  sufficiently  vio- 
lent to  get  under  the  hide  of  the  Englishman 
and  make  him  realize  that  these  people  are  not 
to  be  satisfied  with  bows  and  smiles  and  plati- 
tudes, but  are  human  beings  demanding  what 
they  consider  their  rights,  and  ready  to  make 
any  sacrifice  to  get  them.  Suffrage  will  come 
eventually,  and  whether  it  is  because  of,  or  in 
spite  of,  militancy,  the  militants  will  claim  the 
victory.  Posterity  will  have  to  do  some  nice 
judging. 

Whether  or  not  the  English  suffragists  are 
right  about  militancy,  there  is  just  one  way  to 
insure  their  continuing  in  their  present  attitude. 
That  is  to  persecute  them.  Every  cause,  right 
or  wrong,  since  the  world  began  has  had  for  its 
best  friends  those  foolish  persons  who  believe 
that  violent  physical  suppression  can  kill  an  idea. 
Treat  malcontents  with  justice,  with  mercy  when 
possible,  with  gentleness  always,  and  the  fanatics 
on  a  given  subject  will  be  reduced  to  inconsider- 
able numbers.  The  surest  way  for  the  English 
Government  and  the  police  to  keep  anger  alive 
and  outrages  constantly  on  the  increase  is  to 
abrogate  their  policy  of  tolerance  and  make  mar- 
tyrs of  the  suffragists. 

One  thing  more  is  sure:  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  the  sex  antagonism  about  which  some 
French  writers  talk  so  much.  Among  sane  and 
healthy  people  the  sexes  do  not  repel;  they  at- 

[304] 


HERE    ARE     LADIES 


tract.  What  antagonism  does  exist  is  class  re- 
sentment, class  hatred.  Under  a  social  system 
where  one  sex  is  the  ruling  class  and  the  other 
the  loved  but  distinctly  subordinate  one,  there 
inevitably  arises  an  attitude  of  distrust,  of  mu- 
tual self-defense,  entirely  unjustified  by  nature. 
The  woman  resents  the  unfairness,  the  domina- 
tions, the  ruthless  suppressions  of  a  man-made 
world,  colored  and  given  personality  by  mas- 
culine self-assurance.  The  man  resents  the  pet- 
tinesses, the  meannesses,  the  duplicity,  that  are 
the  weapons  of  helplessness  and  impotent  an- 
ger. Everything  has  been  done  in  the  name  of 
differentiation  of  charm  and  division  of  labor 
to  make  the  gulf  between  the  sexes  as  wide  as 
possible.  In  France,  where  this  aspect  of  civili- 
zation has  been  carried  furthest,  there  has  now 
developed  this  strange,  unnatural  sentiment. 
There  is  just  one  remedy,  an  exactly  equitable 
division  of  power  and  privilege  between  the 
sexes  and  the  understanding  that  comes  of  mu- 
tual work  and  similar  ideals.  When  the  war  of 
the  sexes  ceases  to  be  the  rebellion  of  an  op- 
pressed class  against  which  all  the  odds  are 
placed,  and  becomes  an  equal  fight  on  equal 
terms  with  all  the  artificial  handicaps  removed., 
it  will  simply  cease  to  be.  When  men  and  women 
look  straight  into  each  other's  eyes  as  equals, 
so-called  sex  antagonism  will  vanish  from  the 
earth. 

[306] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


THE  CERTAINTY  OF  SUFFRAGE 

WITHIN  ten  years  or  less  women  will  be 
voting  on  the  same  terms  as  men  in  most 
of  our  States,  and  the  backward  remnant  will  be 
hustling  to  catch  up.  The  movement  has  passed 
the  stage  of  doubt  and  ridicule,  and  has  almost 
passed  the  stage  of  argument.  The  change  from 
the  indifference  of  twenty  years  ago  is  amazing. 
Women  vote  in  eleven  States  now,  against  four 
then,  and  the  issue  will  be  up  to  the  voters  this 
fall  in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
Iowa,  Massachusetts,  West  Virginia,  Tennessee, 
and  perhaps  other  States.  The  affirmative  side  is 
active,  aggressive,  and  confident,  and  includes 
many  men  who  have  gained  their  faith  by  fighting 
for  better  politics.  In  comparison,  the  mental 
bankruptcy  of  the  antis  is  fairly  pitiful.  The  suf- 
fragists can  rest  their  case  on  the  plain  fact  that 
women  do  participate  in  the  life  of  our  modern 
communities,  and  should,  therefore,  participate 
in  the  business  of  government.  The  antis  can 
reply  only  with  solemn  and  pathetic  foolishness 
about  "disorganizing  society,"  "advanced  theo- 
ries," "new  evils,"  and  the  like — the  stale  harp- 
ings  of  prejudice  and  timidity.  In  a  contest  be- 
tween such  forces  the  outcome  is  certain,  for  the 
United  States  is  neither  timid  nor  silly. 

[306] 


HERE    AEE     LADIES 


SCIENCE   AND   LOVE 

IT  was  Byron,  whose  experience  was  not  slight, 
who  said  that  love  was  woman's  whole  ex- 
istence. Certainly  an  existence  without  relation 
to  love  can  never  bring  out  what  she  has  of  best. 
Consciously  or  unconsciously,  deliberately  fol- 
lowing a  definite  decision,  or  blindly  falling  in 
with  nature's  larger  plan,  the  finest  women  choose  •  - 
the  path  of  sentiment,  and  when  intellectual 
life  lies  in  another  direction  they  pass  it  by. 
The  greatest  woman  scientist  who  ever  lived 
was  Sophia  Kovalevsky,  who  received  from 
the  French  Academy  the  Prix  B  or  din,  and 
an  additional  prize  "on  account  of  the  ex- 
traordinary service  rendered  to  mathematical 
physics  by  this  remarkable  work."  The  award  y 
was  made  by  the  Academy  in  complete  igno- 
rance of  the  fact  that  the  winner  was  a  woman. 
Naturally,  Mme.  Kovalevsky's  triumph  was  tre- 
mendous. "She  was,"  says  Mr.  R.  C.  Duncan's 
account,  "feted,  honored,  and  everywhere  greeted 
with   ovations.     Her  lover  witnessed   all   this  J . 

4 

from  the  edge  of  the  crowd,  and,  unable  to  ac- 
cept his  subordinate  position,  retired  from  his 
suit.  The  affair  literally  killed  her,  for  she  never 
recovered  from  the  blow,  and  died,  a  broken 
creature,  two  years  later." 
We  don't  think  much  of  Mme.  Kovalevsky's 

[307] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

lover,  but  the  story  shows  one  reason  why 
women  have  not  done  much  in  science,  and  why 
their  work  has  often  been  so  mixed  with  that 
of  some  male  as  to  make  it  impossible  to  say 
which  was  whose.  Perhaps  Caroline  Herschel 
did  discover  five  new  comets;  but  would  she 
have  been  a  great  astronomer  if  her  brother  had 
not  been  a  greater  one,  and  she  his  secretary? 
How  much  of  Fanny  Mendelssohn's  work 
ought  to  be  credited  to  her  more  famous  brother 
Felix?  The  discovery  of  radium  was  the  joint 
work  of  Mme.  Curie  and  her  husband;  now  that 
he  is  dead  and  she  has  his  professorship,  the  world 
may  learn  how  much  she  is  capable  of  without 
the  assistance  and  inspiration  of  a  man. 
"Couldn't  I  do  Euclid  if  you  were  to  teach  me 
instead  of  Tom?"  exclaimed  Maggie  Tulliver 
to  her  brother  Tom's  tutor.  And  the  indignant 
Tom  broke  in:  "No,  you  couldn't.  Girls  can't 
do  Euclid,  can  they,  sir?"  The  tutor  solemnly 
affirmed  that  they  could  not. 

If  they  can't,  it  is  because  they  are  engaged 
in  a  work  even  more  important  to  living  beings 
than  squaring  the  hypothenuse  or  crossing  the 
Asses'  Bridge. 


[308] 


HERE    ARE     LADIES 


WOMEN'S   WORK 

IT  is  now  two  years  since  the  women  of  Cali- 
fornia were  enfranchised.     Says  the  "Home 
Alliance"  of  Woodland: 

In  California  now  there  are  108  "dry"  supervisorial  dis- 
tricts, 45  "dry"  incorporated  cities.  More  than  300  towns 
have  voted  "dry"  since  January  1,  1912.  Within  the  last 
two  years  818  saloons  have  been  closed  by  ballot  in  80 
supervisorial  districts  in  this  jurisdiction.  Two  years  ago, 
in  California,  there  were  200  "dry"  towns;  there  are  now 
682  "dry"  towns,  and  more  than  one-half  the  territory  of 
this  State  is  free  from  saloons. 

This  is  now  a  part  of  what  men  used  to  call 
contemptuously  "women's  work."  No  wonder 
the  liquor  interests  of  the  country  bitterly  fight 
every  extension  of  the  suffrage  in  the  direction  of 
sex  democracy !  The  battle  for  social  betterment 
is  not  always  won  when  saloons  are  legally  abol- 
ished. 

But  who  doesn't  find  California  better  off  to- 
day than  two  years  ago,  when  the  accident  of  sex 
made  and  unmade  voters? 


GUARDING    THE    GIRLS 

FIFTY  thousand  girls   drop   out  of   sight 
every    year,"    a    famous    newspaper    an- 
nounces in  huge  type.    A  mere  student  would 

[309] 


/ 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

ask  what  percentage  this  is  of  all  girls  between, 
say,  fifteen  and  twenty  years,  and  whether  such 
loss  is  possible.  The  article  apparently  is  based 
on  the  fact  that  600  girls  disappeared  in  twelve 
months  between  New  York  and  Chicago.  This 
is  bad  enough  surely.  The  remedy  recom- 
mended is  to  copy  after  an  English  association 
which  publishes  protective  rules  beginning  as  fol- 
lows: 

1.  Girls  should  never  speak  to  strangers,  either  men  or 
women,  in  the  street,  in  shops,  in  stations,  in  trains,  in 
lonely  country  roads,  or  in  places  of  amusement. 

2.  Girls  should  never  ask  the  way  of  any  but  officials  on 
duty,  such  as  policemen,  railway  officials,  or  postmen. 

S.  Girls  should  never  loiter  or  stand  about  alone  in  the 
street,  and  if  accosted  by  a  stranger  (whether  man  or 
woman)  should  walk  as  quickly  as  possible  to  the  nearest 
policeman. 

4.  Girls  should  never  stay  to  help  a  woman  who  ap- 
parently faints  at  their  feet  in  the  street,  but  should  im- 
mediately call  a  policeman  to  her  aid. 

Possibly  these  restrictions  are  colored  by  the 
moral  overstrain  apt  to  characterize  a  reformer's 
zeal,  but  it  is  fair  to  ask  whether  a  land  in  which 
they  are  necessary  is  either  civilized  or  Chris- 
tian. Nothing  Bernard  Shaw  says  of  English 
hypocrisy  and  sensuality  is  half  so  striking  as 
this  proposal  to  put  everybody  in  social  quaran- 
tine. If  the  facts  sustain  such  contentions,  the 
sooner  we  have  an  ironclad  etiquette  the  better. 

[310] 


HERE     ARE     LADIES 


But  what  a  ghastly  commentary  on  our  "prog- 
ress," how  our  cities  sink  their  pride  and  be- 
come mere  traps  of  lust  and  death! 
What  is  the  truth  of  all  this? 


LEADERSHIP 

JANE  ADD  AM  S  has  more  than  once  been 
named  the  First  Citizen  of  Illinois.  Re- 
turning from  the  Women's  International  Con- 
gress at  Budapest,  she  was  promptly  inter- 
viewed on  the  Illinois  Legislature's  action  in  en- 
franchising women  and  on  the  suggestion  that 
she  herself  run  for  Mayor  of  Chicago.  Said 
Miss  Addams: 

We  must  not  jump  into  politics  haphazard,  now  that  we 
have  won  the  suffrage.  If  we  do,  we  will  be  likely  to  find 
that  we  have  jumped  into  deep  water.  It  is  my  advice — 
and  I  am  sure  that  it  is  the  settled  policy  of  the  Illinois 
suffragists — not  to  go  in  for  officeholding  at  once.  It  would 
be  unwise  to  do  this  until  we  have  become  familiar  with  the 
power  that  has  been  made  legally  ours. 

Words  like  these  gain  woman  suffrage  as 
many  supporters  in  America  as  the  burning  of  a 
fifteenth-century  castle  or  the  assault  on  a  cabi- 
net minister  loses  to  the  cause  in  England.  In 
her  equipment  for  exercising  the  ballot,  and  for 

[311] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

the  leadership  of  men  and  women  alike,  Miss 
Addams  includes  the  rare  gift  of  tact. 


THE    OVERPAID    GIRL 

A  REASONABLY  good-looking  young 
woman  is  hurt  in  a  midnight  automobile 
accident  which  involves  the  usual  accessories  of 
the  millionaire's  son  and  the  bottle  of  wine.  On 
investigation  the  ordinary  data  of  such  cases  are 
ascertained:  irregular  schooling,  casual  work  on 
the  stage,  and  boarding-house  life.  The  reader 
inclines  toward  sympathy,  begins  to  release  the 
minimum-wage  argument,  but  encounters  this 
confusing  item : 

She  receives  $100  a  month  from  the  estate  of  her  grand- 
father, the  money  being  sent  to  her  by  the  treasurer  of  the 

American  National  Exchange  Bank  in ,  Texas.     The 

girl  is  now  twenty-two  years  old. 

We  are  going  to  have  justice  in  this  matter  of 
women's  wages.  The  misery  of  oppression  by 
pay  is  going  to  be  ended  just  as  we  ended  the 
misery  of  oppression  by  slavery.  But  the  lives 
of  those  who  have  more  money  than  character 
will  be  very  much  what  they  are  to-day.  The 
process  of  selection  is  eternal. 


[312] 


HERE    ARE    LADIE 


THE    WORLD    MOVES— AND    WOMEN    HELP 
TO   MOVE    IT 

THE  Rev.  Antoinette  Brown  Blackwell, 
said  to  be  the  first  woman  minister  regu- 
larly ordained  in  this  country,  has  celebrated 
her  eighty-ninth  birthday.  She  was  ordained  in 
1853  after  a  struggle  of  some  years.  To-day 
more  than  twenty-five  hundred  women  are 
preaching  in  the  United  States  as  regularly  or- 
dained ministers.  When  she  sought  a  college 
education  in  1843  there  were  only  two  or  three 
higher  institutions  of  learning  open  to  women, 
— notably  the  Collegiate  Institute,  now  Oberlin 
College,  at  Oberlin,  Ohio.  To-day  in  the  uni- 
versities, colleges,  and  technical  schools  of  the 
United  States  there  are  over  five  thousand  women 
serving  as  professors  and  instructors  and  more 
than  one  hundred  thousand  woman  students. 
There  are  over  two  thousand  woman  lawyers, 
more  than  seven  thousand  women  physicians  and 
surgeons.  All  this  change  is  part  of  a  great 
progress  toward  freedom  and  a  better  social 
organization.    It  will  go  further. 


[313] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


SUFFRAGE    HEROES 

TEN  years  ago  believers  in  votes  for  women 
were  accounted  freaks.  They  were  the 
proverbial  "short-haired  women  and  long-haired 
men."  When  male  suffragists  marched  up  Fifth 
Avenue  in  the  first  suffrage  parade,  bright  young 
men  asked  them:  Who  would  cook  dinner  to- 
night? To-day,  so  far  have  conditions  changed, 
it  takes  a  confidence  in  one's  convictions  almost 
approaching  courage  not  to  be  a  suffragist. 


BABIES    AND    "HELP" 

RESENTING  certain  remarks  in  this  paper 
about  one  of  President  Roosevelt's  hob- 
bies, an  exceptionally  intelligent  and  earnest 
woman  complains  with  spirit  that  the  subject 
should  be  treated  more  thoughtfully  than  with 
"mere  wails  and  vituperation."  Her  letter 
covers,  not  only  the  main  question  of  "race  sui- 
cide," but  the  whole  of  a  matter  upon  which  we 
should  like  to  see  more  thought  focused;  and 
covers  it  with  such  breadth  of  view  and  so  much 
stimulating  suggestion  that  we  print  it  at  length. 
Her  home,  a  small  town  in  Illinois,  makes  her 
problems  typical  of  fully  three-fourths  of  the 
households  of  the  United  States: 

[314] 


HERE    ARE    LADIES 


There  are  undeniably  many  women  who  are  more  inter- 
ested in  bridge  than  in  babies.  Is  utter  selfishness,  mere 
frivolity,  the  only  cause?  The  fact  is  that  the  growing 
unwillingness  of  women  to  accept  positions  to  work  in 
homes,  even  at  the  exorbitant  salaries  which  they  can  now 
command,  is  working  a  silent  revolution,  one  result  of 
which  is  race  suicide. 

People  cannot  have  large  families  unless  they  have 
stable  homes,  and  it  does  not  take  much  of  a  jar  to  upset 
the  equilibrium  of  the  modern  household  helper.  The  ad- 
vent of  each  successive  child  is  as  a  volcanic  eruption  to 
the  domestic  arrangements,  and  after  the  birth  of  the  third 
child  it  is  practically  impossible  to  get  any  help  at  all, 
short  of  establishing  a  regular  servants'  hall.  In  Zola's 
"Fecondite,"  that  lovely  idyl  of  a  family  of  twenty-two 
children,  he  introduced  a  magic  factor  that  made  his  story 
possible,  the  faithful  servant  who,  when  the  twenty-two 
came,  stayed!  Her  like  is  not  to  be  had  in  this  country  for 
love  or  money. 

The  problem  does  not  so  disastrously  affect  the  very 
rich,  who  can  keep  up  practically  a  separate  establishment 
for  a  large  household  of  servants,  and  thus  furnish  them 
the  social  life  which  they  demand  nowadays.  Nor  does  it 
affect  the  very  poor,  but  it  does  most  grievously  affect  the 
so-called  middle  classes ;  that  is,  men  with  incomes  of  from 
$2,000  to  $15,000  a  year,  including  practically  all  the 
young,  well-educated  men  who  do  not  have  independent 
fortunes — the  very  ones,  in  short,  among  whom  race  suicide 
is  so  deplored. 

In  the  days  when  our  grandmothers  had  their  famous 
large  families  there  were  maiden  aunts  and  grandmothers 
and  various  unattached  females  who  could  be  relied  on  in 
time  of  emergency  to  turn  to  and  help  out.  But  the 
maiden  aunts  of  to-day  are  bachelor  maids,  and  the  grand- 
mothers are  running  charities  and  various  institutions  for 

[315] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAKKS 

the  public  welfare,  and  to  put  their  shoulders  to  anybody's 
domestic  wheel  is  farthest  from  their  thoughts.  So  it  be- 
hooves the  wife  and  mother  not  to  assume  a  bigger  burden 
than  she  can  bear  alone,  alone  without  help  from  family 
or  servants.  And  unless  she  is  a  great  exception  she  can 
not  care  unaided  for  more  than  two  or  three  children  with- 
out injury  to  her  health,  which  is  a  mother's  only  capital. 

I  would  like  to  see  more  of  the  able  thinkers,  some  men, 
for  instance,  seriously  turn  their  attention  to  this  domestic- 
service  problem,  trying  to  realize  its  full  significance  to 
society.  The  women  alone  cannot  solve  it.  The  very  ones 
who  suffer  most  are  too  busy  to  try. 

Meantime,  I  can't  help  wondering  if  President  Roose- 
velt or  the  editor  of  Collier's  ever  tried  in  the  absence  of 
"help"  to  soothe  a  colicky  baby  with  one  hand  and  prepare 
the  family  dinner  with  the  other.    I  have,  and  it  is  no  joke. 

No  thoughtful  person  will  fail  to  share  with  en- 
thusiasm the  conviction  that  the  making  of 
smooth-running  and  comfortable  homes  is  a  good 
deal  more  important  than  most  of  the  subjects 
of  politics  and  affairs  to  which  men  consider  it 
more  dignified  and  masculine  to  give  their  at- 
tention. President  Roosevelt  has,  and  exercises, 
an  unparalleled  capacity  for  usefulness  in  his 
ability  to  give  importance  to  simple  human  prob- 
lems, and  direct  thought  to  them,  and  we  wish 
he  might  thrust  this  one  into  the  foreground. 
One  obvious  aspect  is  a  fundamental  error  in  the 
public  schools.  To  "keep  house"  in  one  way  or 
another  will  be  the  career  of  probably  ninety  girls 
out  of  a  hundred,  and  ought  to  be  the  career  of 

[816] 


HERE     ARE     LADIES 


nine  of  the  remaining  ten.  That  every  one  of 
them  should,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  to  nineteen, 
put  on  a  white  dress,  read  an  essay  on  "The 
Heroines  of  Shakespeare,"  and  go  through  the 
form  of  being  "graduated"  without  knowing  as 
much  as  a  cave-dweller  about  the  simplest  ele- 
ments of  domestic  work,  is  a  folly  made  possible 
only  by  viciously  wrong  conventionalities.  A 
young  woman  who  has  more  experience  and  more 
skill  in  bridge  than  in  cooking  or  in  housekeeping 
is  a  pathetic  failure,  for  which  the  responsibility 
is  divisible  between  a  mother  who  has  pitiably 
failed  to  understand  her  duty,  and  a  school  sys- 
tem which  has  not  had  intelligent  public  opinion 
directed  on  its  curriculum  for  more  than  a  cen- 
tury. 


COOKING    SCHOOLS    AND    BRIDGE 

SIMPLE  living,  of  course,  will  help.  Elabo- 
rate entertaining,  which  is,  as  a  rule,  with- 
out reason,  except  to  serve  the  vanity  of  the 
hostess,  entails  that  extra  work  and  the  up- 
setting of  order  and  routine  which  most  often 
causes  domestic  servants  to  prefer  the  fixed  hours 
and  regular  routine  of  factories  and  stores.  A 
child,  after  the  age  of  six  or  seven,  should  be 
of  small  demand  on  the  time  of  a  servant;  it 
can  care  for  itself,  and  will  be  the  better  for 

[317] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

being  required  to.  And  a  daughter  of  twelve  is 
not  being  properly  trained  if  she  is  not  contrib- 
uting to  the  household  what  would  be  half  the 
work  of  a  servant.  A  girl  of  that  age  ought  to 
be  learning  at  school  the  elements  of  cooking 
and  housekeeping,  just  as  a  boy  should  be  busy, 
not  on  the  fads  which  go  by  the  name  "manual 
training,"  but  on  real  work  corresponding  to  ap- 
prenticeship to  a  sustaining  trade. 

For  bridge  there  is  no  palliation.  The  mother, 
whose  faults  of  early  training  have  left  her  with 
a  vacuous  mind,  causes  by  her  playing  no  more 
loss  to  the  world  than  the  waste  of  her  own  time 
— more  or  less  valueless  at  best.  But  to 
teach  her  young  daughter  to  play,  in  order  to 
make  up  a  four  and  minister  to  her  own  dissi- 
pation, is  a  selfish  crime.  To  take  for  this  pur- 
pose evening  hours  that  might  be  given  to  music, 
which  makes  for  a  softer  and  finer  humanity ;  or, 
worse  still,  daylight  hours  which  might  be  spent 
in  that  outdoor  activity  which  is  essential  to 
fit  her  for  her  most  important  business  in  life, 
is  a  wrong  for  which  no  amount  of  training  in 
empty  conventions  can  atone. 


[818] 


XIX 

MATTERS  OF  BUSINESS 


ROOM   AT   THE    TOP 

OF  the  170  ranking  officers  of  a  certain  rail- 
way system,  163  (including  the  presi- 
dent) started  at  the  bottom,  sweeping  out 
cars,  carrying  water  for  laborers,  working  on 
the  right  of  way,  and  other  like  jobs  of  the  very 
commonest  kind.  Please  note  that  142  of  the 
170  have  been  in  the  service  over  twenty  years. 
One  essential  to  success  in  any  business  is  to 
remain  in  it. 


A   LESSON    FROM    BELOW 

VASTLY  overquoted,  we  think,  are  those 
catch  phrases  of  biology,  "the  struggle  for 
life"  and  "the  survival  of  the  fittest."  Usually 
the  service  they  yield  is  in  defense  of  something 
otherwise  indefensible — an  act  of  heartless  ag- 
gression offensive  to  the  moral  code,  or  a  bit 
of  selfishness  that  ignores  all  of  a  man's  decent 
obligations  to  his  neighbors.     Those  most  apt 

[319] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

to  fly  for  refuge  to  the  phrases  know  little  of 
the  very  biology  upon  which  they  affect  to  rely, 
for  they  ignore  the  very  essential  fact  that  Na- 
ture's creatures  hunt  in  big  units  as  well  as  small. 
Whenever  a  tribal  line  is  established,  Nature 
enforces  a  rule  of  service  within  the  tribe,  or  the 
pack,  or  the  herd,  as  rigorously  as  the  moral  code 
is  buttressed  about  and  enforced  among  men. 
The  wolf  may  do  what  he  will  with  the  rabbit, 
but  among  his  fellow  wolves  he  must  beware  of 
the  law  of  the  pack  and  the  power  of  the  pack 
to  turn  and  rend  him.  We  think  some  of  our 
plutocrats  are  finding  their  riches  a  heavy  load. 
While  they  are  quoting  the  biological  catch 
phrases  about  the  "struggle  for  life,"  they  are 
actually  passing  through  some  such  experience 
as  the  drone  bee  faces  when  the  hive  has  turned 
upon  him,  or  the  decrepit  buffalo  bull  feels  when 
the  herd  turns  and  drives  him  out.  A  very  use- 
ful thing  for  those  to  remember  whose  business 
game  has  been  to  scalp  the  people  among  whom 
they  dwell  is  that  however  much  the  old-time 
Sioux  was  feasted  for  the  scalps  he  brought  in 
from  without  the  tribe,  he  was  promptly  and 
efficiently  tomahawked  whenever  he  tried  to 
gather  his  loot  too  near  home.  A  little  study 
of  a  withering  influence  that  David  Starr  Jor- 
dan has  described  in  a  biological  treatise  as  the 
"Social  Chill"  would  help  a  great  many  of  our 
citizens  to  understand  that  their  only  hope  of 

[320] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


future  survival  lies  in  large-geared  service  to 
the  big  units  in  which  the  social  conscience  is 
now  remorselessly  at  work. 


THE   HIGHROAD 

OF  all  the  recipes  for  success  boomed  last 
June  in  the  usual  profusion,  only  one  sticks 
in  our  memory.  It  is  that  of  John  G.  John- 
son of  Philadelphia,  now  said  to  be  the  greatest 
lawyer  in  the  English-speaking  world.  It  is  in- 
deed simple: 

He  found  out  that  very  few  lawyers  really  knew  cor- 
poration law.  And  he  made  up  his  mind  that  he  would 
learn  it. 


A  RAILWAY   THAT   KNOWS   HOW 

ON  a  smoothly  running  express  train  be- 
tween Washington  and  New  York  we 
found  an  illustrated  circular  called  "Informa- 
tion," issued  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  sys- 
tem. This  issue  tells  what  Italians  are  doing  for 
the  railroad,  and  says  that  of  140,000  employees 
on  the  lines  east  of  Pittsburgh  and  Erie,  11,000 
are  of  that  nation.  Twenty  years  ago  there  were 
very  few,  all  of  them  "laborers";  to-day 

[321] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

Italy  is  represented  in  practically  every  department  of  the 
railroad,  and  each  day  these  men  are  making  their  impres- 
sion. .  .  .  Many  of  them  hold  positions  of  trust  and  re- 
sponsibility, due  possibly  to  a  great  extent  to  their  learn- 
ing the  English  language.  .  .  .  Promotion  is  always  open 
to  the  man  who  works  hard  and  improves  himself. 

We  are  glad  to  believe  that  this  is  true.  We 
are  glad  to  read  of  "the  Italian-English  corre- 
spondence course  which  the  railroad  gives  to  all 
who  apply  for  it."  The  Pennsylvania  is  ex- 
ceptionally fortunate  as  a  corporation  and  em- 
ployer of  labor  if  its  employees  really  believe 
promotion  "always  open  to  the  man  who  works 
hard" — and  the  public  will  share  the  benefit. 
The  spirit  of  loyalty,  confidence  of  receiving  jus- 
tice :  no  dollar-and-cent  value  can  be  placed  upon 
these  factors,  but  their  absence  is  none  the  less 
fatal  to  successful  organization.  The  men  who 
have  made  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  have  not 
always  measured  up  in  all  regards  (civic  virtue, 
for  instance)  to  Saint  Louis  and  George 
Washington — but  somehow  they  have  managed 
to  instill  a  notable  morale  into  their  men,  and 
the  traveling  public  knows  their  conductors  and 
brakemen  for  courtesy  and  intelligence  and  a 
general  air  of  self-respect.  Some  of  the  railroads 
realize  that  they  are  public-service  corporations, 
and  act  accordingly  in  those  human  relations 
where  this  service  is  apparent.  But  cheerful, 
hopeful  employees  are  essential  to  creating  really 

[322] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


cordial  relations  between  the  public  and  the  cor- 
poration. The  Pennsylvania  was  one  of  the  first 
railroad  systems  to  apply  this  fundamental  truth. 


THE   BASIC    SERVICE   OF   RAILROADING 

ONE  of  the  most  impressive  sights  of  our  time 
is  that  from  a  wagon  bridge  over  a  four- 
track  railroad.  You  may  be  a  day's  walk  from 
the  nearest  city,  but  the  fact  of  the  city's  ex- 
istence is  plain  in  the  endless  movement  of  goods 
and  people.  It  is  plain  also  that  the  railroad  is 
not  so  much  a  business  as  a  gigantic  underlying 
service.  This  service  moves  human  beings  and 
things  from  place  to  place.  We  get  used  to  it, 
depend  on  it,  and  in  time  come  to  shape  our  ac- 
tions very  largely  by  what  the  service  makes  pos- 
sible. It  follows  that  the  cost  of  this  transpor- 
tation becomes  embedded  in  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  prices.  It  is  desirable,  therefore,  that 
its  cost  to  others  be  stable,  so  that  passengers 
and  shippers  can  be  sure  of  their  plans.  Fur- 
thermore, the  railroad  must  be  made  to  feel  that 
success  depends  on  doing  a  good  job  rather  than 
on  taking  advantage  of  the  public's  necessities. 
Mr.  Brandeis  has  given  this  point  the  clearest 
and  most  dramatic  of  statements  in  his  famous 
aphorism  about  the  "Million  Dollars  a  Day" 
which  efficiency  ought  to  save  for  the  railroads. 

[323] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

Our  whole  accepted  policy  of  regulation  and  pub- 
lic control  hangs  upon  these  facts.  The  public 
must  have  real  power  over  rates  and  capitaliza- 
tion, over  dividends,  and  over  purchases  of  other 
lines  and  utilities,  or  else  the  monopoly  power 
of  the  railroad  will  be  used  in  many  cases  for 
private  gain  and  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  com- 
munity. There  have  been  too  many  instances 
of  this. 


WHAT    DO   WE    WANT? 

IT  is  not  a  matter  of  bargaining  with  an  in- 
dependent power.  It  is  a  matter  of  deciding 
what  we  want  to  get  out  of  a  certain  service. 
These  railroad  corporations  are  creatures  of  the 
State,  and  most  of  them  realize  it  very  clearly 
nowadays.  It  is  the  economic  facts  that  are 
obdurate,  and  it  is  our  own  social  purpose  that 
is  vague.  Do  we  want  to  use  the  railroads  so 
as  to  accentuate  and  emphasize  the  present  domi- 
nance of  the  Atlantic  Seaboard  in  the  business 
life  of  this  country?  Or  do  we  want  to  use  the 
railroads  so  as  to  get  a  spreading  of  popula- 
tion and  industry  over  our  entire  area?  What 
towns  and  regions  should  be  given  a  comparative 
advantage  when  rates  are  readjusted?  There 
is  no  benefit  to  be  had  from  merely  throwing  a 
bone  in  the  shape  of  higher  rates  to  those  who 

[324] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


own  the  railroads  as  property.  What  we  must 
do  is  to  strengthen  and  extend  the  railroads  as 
a  gigantic  fundamental  service,  no  matter  how 
owned.  This  is  the  only  control  worth  while, 
and  to  accomplish  it  will  require  the  handling 
of  the  problem  from  the  broadest  standpoint  of 
constructive  industrial  statesmanship.  It  will 
not  be  done  by  figuring  dividends  and  costs.  We 
must  have  a  national  plan.  What,  in  the  long 
run,  do  the  American  people  want  from  their 
railroads  ? 


STEEL    CARS   AND    SLAUGHTER 

THE  morning  after  the  last  big  wreck 
the  press  was  lurid  with  demands  for 
steel  cars.  Steel  cars  are  necessary,  because  they 
render  accidents  somewhat  less  fatal.  But  the 
hue  and  cry  for  steel  cars  may  be  very  harmful, 
for  all  that,  if  it  fills  the  public  and  the  legis- 
lative mind  with  the  foolish  notion  that  such 
equipment  will  prevent  railway  slaughter.  In- 
deed, in  some  future  wreck  these  steel  cars,  which 
are  conductors  of  electricity,  may  result,  in  con- 
nection with  a  third  rail  or  an  overhead  wire,  in 
a  tragedy  of  wholesale  electrocution  not  pleas- 
ant to  think  about.  But  that  is  another  story. 
The  only  thing  which  will  prevent  that  is  good 
railroading.    Wrecks  happen  on  almost  all  rail- 

[325] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ABKS 

ways ;  but  wrecks  on  the  shocking  American  scale 
of  frequency  and  loss  of  life  are  caused  by  only 
one  thing.  That  thing  is  railway  incompetence. 
It  may  be  incompetence  in  training  and  manag- 
ing men.  It  may  be  incompetence  in  allowing 
greed  for  dividends  to  forestall  needed  improve- 
ments in  track  and  equipment.  It  may  be  finan- 
cial incompetence.  But  it  is  incompetence. 
These  wrecks  prove  by  ghastly  and  overwhelm- 
ing evidence  that  the  railway  managements  of 
the  United  States  have  not  had  the  brains  and 
the  integrity  to  develop  their  roads  with  the 
growth  of  the  nation  on  safe  lines.  Railways  in 
other  lands  have  no  such  horrible  array  of  deaths 
and  wounds.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  su- 
periority of  the  American  railway  in  some  re- 
gards, so  long  as  this  thing  continues  it  is  a  fail- 
ure, and  the  system  of  private  ownership  stands 
hopelessly  condemned. 


THE    NEW   HAVEN    MESS 

THE  report  made  to  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  by  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  recites  a  vast  amount  of  detail  con- 
cerning the  most  infamous  financial  scandal  this 
country  has  had  in  years.  The  main  facts  were 
already  so  well  known  that  the  stock  of  the  rail- 
road in  question  was  selling  at  one-third  of  what 

[326] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


used  to  be  its  normal  value.  But  the  full  ac- 
count is  appalling.  The  whole  thing  may  be 
summed  up  by  saying  that  the  New  York,  New 
Haven  &  Hartford  Railroad  was  engaged  in 
every  sort  of  business  save  that  of  railroad  work. 
Juggling  paper  securities,  creating  public  opin- 
ion, buying  steamships  and  trolley  lines,  influ- 
encing legislation  and  greasing  certain  myste- 
rious politicians  were  a  few  of  the  activities  to 
which  this  corporation  devoted  much  of  its  best 
brains  and  a  great  deal  of  other  people's  money. 
The  highly  paid,  highly  trained,  and  well-reputed 
men  at  the  head  of  it  seem  to  have  crawled 
through  every  sewer  of  crooked  political  finance 
in  New  York  and  New  England.  The  usual 
chorus  of  apology  and  explanation  is  now  being 
heard  from  the  interested  and  sympathetic;  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  is  freely  ac- 
cused of  suspicion,  prejudice,  political  aims,  and 
so  forth,  but  it  is  only  common  sense  to  insist 
that  honest  men  do  not  burn  the  books,  nor  deal 
largely  with  mysterious  forgotten  strangers,  nor 
willfully  confuse  their  own  transactions,  nor  pay 
trust  money  for  mere  water.  Facts  like  these 
cannot  be  smoothed  over.  They  must  be  refuted 
or  confessed. 


[327] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


MONOPOLY   AND    EMPIRE 

YET  this  supposed  railroad  company  was  us- 
ing the  money  of  thousands  of  hard-headed 
American  citizens;  its  directors  numbered  many 
of  the  best  business  men  in  New  England.  What 
were  they  after?  Allowing  for  waste,  arrogant 
dictation,  carelessness,  and  the  false  confidence 
of  long  success,  it  remains  clear  that  there  was  a 
great  plan  on  foot.  It  seems  to  have  been  in- 
tended to  build  up  and  consolidate  a  unified 
transportation  system,  a  railroad  empire  which 
should  serve  and  guard  and  profit  by  the  indus- 
trial greatness  of  New  England.  Every  chance 
of  competition,  every  possible  shifting  of  the 
tides  of  trade  and  the  channels  of  transportation, 
was  to  be  anticipated  and  held  in  line.  It  was  a 
great  dream  of  enduring  power;  it  regarded 
neither  law  nor  ethics,  and  went  to  wreck  on 
facts.  Such  an  enterprise  is  a  carcass  for  all  the 
vultures  of  business  and  politics.  It  must  be 
kept  secret  and  be  put  through  in  haste,  there- 
fore it  is  blackmailed  at  every  turn.  Financial 
power  can  pay  three  prices  for  everything,  but 
it  cannot  get  three  earnings.  Receipts  were  fall- 
ing and  expenses  rising,  yet  at  the  worst  the  rail- 
road itself  earned  some  twenty  millions  net. 
The  old  dividends  could  have  been  paid  but  for 
the  $204,000,000  "invested"  outside  the  steam- 

[328] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 

railway  field.  This  water  broke  their  backs  and 
would  have  done  so,  investigation  or  no  investi- 
gation. 

What  next?  The  only  certain  thing  is  that  the 
last  ounce  of  political  capital  will  be  squeezed 
out  of  the  incident.  What  we  want  is,  on  the 
one  hand,  enforcement  of  the  law  and,  on  the 
other,  constructive  work  calculated  to  free  and 
strengthen  the  vitally  essential  and  truly  na- 
tional service  of  railroad  transportation.  The 
reputation  of  the  Attorney  General  and  the  pres- 
tige of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 
will  depend  quite  largely  on  how  they  handle  the 
issue  thus  presented  to  them.  Above  all,  it  will 
furnish  a  very  severe  test  of  the  economic  wisdom 
of  the  Democratic  party. 


REGULATION    AND    TAXES 

THE  Public  Service  Corporation  of  New 
Jersey  operates  a  system  of  trolley  lines, 
gas  works,  and  other  public  utilities  in  that  State. 
During  the  year  1913  taxes  paid  amounted  to  6 
per  cent  of  operating  revenue — i.e.,  every  time  a 
Jerseyman  bought  a  dollar's  worth  of  street-car 
tickets  he  paid  6  cents  taxes.  The  Standard  Gas 
and  Electric  Company  owns  a  number  of  elec- 
tric and  other  utility  companies,  mostly  in  the 
States  west  of  the  Mississippi  River.    Last  year 

[329] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ARKS 

taxes  amounted  to  6.2  per  cent  of  the  combined 
income  of  all  the  subsidiary  companies,  a  trifle 
higher  than  the  New  Jersey  rates.  Every  tele- 
phone bill  paid  by  subscribers  receiving  service 
from  the  Bell  telephone  system  (and  there  are 
several  millions  of  them)  is  over  5  per  cent  taxes 
— that  is,  you  pay  a  dollar  to  the  company  and 
a  nickel  to  the  Government.  All  these  utilities 
are  subject  to  regulation  by  public-service  com- 
missions. Rates  must  be  fixed  high  enough  to 
cover  operating  expenses,  and  taxes  are  such  an 
expense.  It  follows  that  in  fixing  the  rates  to 
be  charged  for  gas,  electricity,  telephone  mes- 
sages, trolley  rides,  etc.,  we  are  arranging  to 
have  these  corporations  collect  taxes  from  us 
as  users  of  these  services.  The  effect  is  that  the 
services  cost  more. 

How  far  do  we  want  to  go  with  this?  Regu- 
lation gives  us  absolute  power  in  the  matter  in 
the  long  run,  and  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  us 
from  making  taxes  60  per  cent,  say,  of  operat- 
ing expenses  instead  of  5  or  6  per  cent.  The 
very  proposition  suggests  what  a  crazy  patch- 
work taxation  is  in  the  United  States.  During 
the  thousands  of  years  that  human  beings  have 
been  living  together  gregariously  they  have 
never  arrived  at  a  satisfactory  method  of  assess- 
ing upon  each  individual  what  his  subscription 
should  be  to  the  common  fund. 

[330] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


INDUSTRIAL    JUSTICE 

HENRY  FORD'S  gigantic  plan  for  an 
eight  hour  day  and  a  minimum  wage  of 
$5  per  day  has  been  given  the  notice  it  deserves, 
but  our  journalists  miss  one  of  the  more  impor- 
tant economic  points  of  it.  The  facts  seem  to  be 
that  the  plant  has  been  built  out  of  earnings  and 
that  no  securities  have  been  sold  to  the  public. 
The  capital  stock  is  $2,000,000  and  there  are  no 
bonds.  How  foolish  and  wrong  this  must  appear 
to  the  average  Wall  Street  "operator"  when  he 
notes  that  last  year's  profits  were  about 
$35,000,0001  On  this  earning  power  as  a  base 
our  talented  "financiers"  would  easily  build  you 
a  capitalization  of  at  least  $400,000,000.  They 
would  issue  and  reissue,  sell  and  resell,  incor- 
porate and  reincorporate  and  concoct  the  old 
hodgepodge  of  preferred  and  common,  bonds  and 
debentures,  holding  companies  and  supply  com- 
panies, that  is  so  f  amiliar  a  sight  in  our  business 
history.  The  sponge  of  "securities"  and  "rights" 
which  could  easily  be  devised  would  absorb  even 
these  enormous  earnings  as  the  Sahara  Desert 
sucks  up  the  babbling  brook.  The  business 
would  stagger  along  and  labor  would  be  paid 
the  "market  rates"  of  wages. 

This  is  where  Henry  Ford  is  "utopian."    He 
has  refused  to  burden  a  great  enterprise  with 

[331] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

the  false  and  parasitic  capitalism  which  has 
blighted  so  many  of  our  railroads  and  mills. 
The  business  is  enormously  successful  so  that 
the  results  are  startling,  but  Mr.  Ford's  great 
departure  lies  in  that  he  has  given  the  enterprise 
the  benefit  of  its  own  power.  In  doing  so  he 
has  shown  us  what  the  business  of  the  future  is 
to  be  like. 


NOTHING   IN   IT 

ANDREW  CARNEGIE,  a  successful  busi- 
ness man  of  Pittsburgh,  recently  gave  out 
four  rather  ordinary  precepts  under  the  heading : 
"My  Rules  for  Manufacturers."  The  final 
clause  of  the  second  rule  deserves  attention: 
"Avoid  resort  to  law;  compromise."  Remember 
that  this  comes  from  the  long  experience  of  a 
man  of  wealth  and  power  who  was  able  to  enlist 
for  himself  litigation's  every  possible  advantage. 
There  is  nothing  in  it.  As  applied  to  business, 
the  whole  apparatus  of  law,  lawyers,  and  courts 
is  slow,  expensive,  inefficient.  We  would  like  to 
hear  some  lawyers  explain  Mr.  Carnegie's  pre- 
cept in  terms  reflecting  credit  on  the  dignity  and 
social  service  of  the  legal  profession.  Can  it  be 
done? 


[392] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


OUR   DEMORALIZED    COURTS 

IN  no  modern  country  has  technicality,  sub- 
terfuge, and  every  legal  tortuosity  reached 
such  a  development  as  in  the  United  States.  In 
none  is  there  such  an  utter  lack  of  organization 
of  the  courts.  In  none  is  reversal,  retrial,  and 
every  form  of  delay  so  prevalent.  In  none  is 
it  so  difficult  for  a  poor  man  to  obtain  justice. 
The  condition  amounts,  as  ex-President  Taft 
so  clearly  said,  to  a  practical  denial  of  jus- 
tice. The  scandal  is  great.  Yet  reform  is  slow. 
The  myth  of  the  sacredness  of  the  law  and  the 
courts  is  strong,  and  very  ably  promoted  by  some 
hundred  thousand  gentlemen  of  the  legal  profes- 
sion who  profit  by  these  conditions.  We  must 
not  lay  tampering  hands  upon  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant!  It  is,  therefore,  agreeable  to  see  one 
of  the  ablest  of  writers  on  law  reform,  himself 
a  lawyer,  Mr.  George  W.  Alger,  writing  in  the 
"World's  Work"  a  series  of  articles  on  what  may 
be  done  in  this  country  toward  obtaining  cheap 
and  speedy  justice.  We  especially  commend 
these  articles  to  the  attention  of  our  readers,  of 
our  lawmakers,  of  our  law  associations,  and  of  our 
most  recent  ex-President,  now  professor  of  law 
in  a  great  university,  who  has  spoken  so  bravely 
in  criticism  of  the  courts  in  former  days  and  who 
might  now  so  fruitfully  throw  the  weight  of  his 

[333] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

influence  in  the  direction  of  this  profoundly  nec- 
essary reform.  Justice  in  this  world  is  at  best 
a  clumsy  approximation;  but  the  advantages  of 
the  law  ought  not  to  lie  with  the  man  who  can 
hire  the  sharpest  and  most  unscrupulous  lawyers 
to  play  upon  ignorance  and  prejudice.  Justice 
can,  as  Mr.  Alger  is  trying  to  show,  be  made  rel- 
atively cheap  and  swift  by  the  application  of 
efficient  business  methods  to  an  archaic  system. 


THE    DISCOURAGEMENT    OF    THRIFT 

THE  people  of  the  United  States  have  now 
saved  up  well  over  a  hundred  billions,  as 
measured  by  current  money  standards.  The 
aggregate  is  amazing,  and,  while  the  amount  per 
capita  is  not  large,  nothing  like  it  was  ever 
known  before  in  any  country.  This  saving  takes 
on  many  forms — the  largest,  of  course,  being  in 
the  rearing  of  children — which  shows  itself  in  the 
steady  increase  in  the  value  of  land.  The  next 
is  ownership  of  enormous  amounts  of  securities, 
of  railway  and  industrial  companies,  and  the  like. 
Then  probably  comes  life  insurance.  The  sav- 
ings in  banks  are  relatively  small.  The  incre- 
ment in  land  values  goes  to  much  less  than  one- 
half  of  the  population,  even  in  theory,  and  a 
comparatively  small  number  get  the  benefit 
which  is  made  up  of  the  efforts  of  all.     The 

[334] 


MATTEES     OF     BUSINESS 

larger  amount  of  the  securities  outstanding 
represents  a  more  or  less  fixed  value.  The  eight- 
een billions  of  insurance  is  of  absolutely  fixed 
value. 

While  these  securities  and  insurance  obliga- 
tions were  being  created,  the  relative  worth  of 
the  dollar  has  been  rapidly  declining.  The  fore- 
handed folk  who  saved  and  loaned  this  money- 
get  for  it  an  average  return  of  less  than  5  per 
cent,  and  if  they  received  back  the  principal 
now  it  would  buy,  of  land  or  food,  one-third  less 
than  twelve  or  fifteen  years  ago.  This  is  a  sav- 
age penalizing  of  thrift.  We  believe  that  events 
will  soon  focus  public  attention  upon  this  se- 
rious problem.  The  procedure  of  the  insurance 
companies,  which  in  part  is  enforced  by  law,  is 
of  special  interest.  The  companies  collect  above 
$600,000,000  annually  from  policy  holders,  and 
from  this  loan  largely  on  long-time  notes.  They 
act  simply  as  money  brokers ;  but  with  this  effect, 
that  with  the  rapid  depreciation  of  the  currency 
in  the  last  fifteen  years,  they  are  now  returning 
to  their  policy  holders,  on  death  claims  or  ma- 
tured policies,  relatively  far  less  than  the  aver- 
age amount  of  money  which  the  policy  holders 
have  paid  in.  Roughly  speaking,  the  policy 
holder  has  been  paying  in  one-dollar  bills;  he 
will  get  back  sixty-six-cent  pieces.  Theoreti- 
cally, the  compounding  of  the  interest  on  pre- 
miums ought  to  pay  the  companies'  expenses  and 

[335] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARK8 

yield  the  policy  holders  a  profit  on  the  average 
payment.  In  point  of  fact,  with  the  extrava- 
gance of  the  companies  and  the  decline  in  the 
purchasing  power  of  the  dollar,  there  is  a  se- 
rious loss. 

This  is  not  as  it  should  be.  A  remedy  might 
lie  in  a  radical  change  in  investment.  A  larger 
part  of  the  insurance  money  is  loaned  directly 
or  indirectly  on  land.  Actual  ownership  of  the 
land  ought  to  be  as  safe  as  loans,  and,  if  gold 
inflation  is  to  continue,  more  profitable.  It  is 
something  to  think  about. 


REAL    CURRENCY   REFORM 

CURRENCY  legislation  is  promised,  pro- 
viding a  somewhat  more  elastic  system,  and 
aiming  to  prevent  money  famines  in  times  of 
severe  stress.  The  fundamental  fact  is  that  we 
have  had  an  out-of-date  and  primitive  system  of 
banking:  a  system  of  forcibly  separated  and 
distinct  units.  Such  a  system  prevails  in  no 
other  highly  developed  commercial  country  in 
the  world.  It  cannot  be  described  better  than 
by  trying  to  think  of  the  United  States  without 
railroads,  and,  in  fact,  with  no  better  transpor- 
tation facilities  than  an  oxcart  or  a  Missouri 
River  steamboat.  The  connections  between  the 
larger  central  banks  and  their  scattered  corre- 

[336] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


spondents  has  been  only  a  little  better  than  in 
colonial  times. 

The  ideal  banking  system,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
is  one  that  will  provide  the  smoothest  and  most 
facile  flow  of  capital  and  of  business  exchange. 
In  France,  for  example,  a  peasant  in  the  most 
remote  district  may  go  to  the  little  branch 
office  of  some  great  Parisian  bank  and  invest 
his  few  hundred  francs  in  securities  recom- 
mended to  him  by  the  bank  and  virtually  guaran- 
teed by  it.  He  is  thereby  on  a  nearly  equal  foot- 
ing with  the  richest  investor  of  Paris  or  Berlin. 
In  Canada,  with  its  amazing  new  development, 
there  is  scarce  a  hamlet  of  three  hundred  souls 
that  has  not  at  least  an  agency  of  one  of  the 
large  banking  companies,  whither  a  man  may  go 
to  borrow  on  his  forthcoming  crop  or  even  to  get 
money  to  purchase  a  cow.  The  notes  of  this  bank 
circulate  as  money.  A  bill  drawn  by  a  shipper 
in  the  far  Northwest  on  a  Montreal  or  Liverpool 
assignee  is  put  through  with  a  minimum  of  ex- 
pense. How  different  it  has  been  in  the  United 
States ! 


HOW   MUCH   PAY? 

IS  any  man  worth  more  than  $25,000  a  year? 
That  depends  on  how  his  abilities  are  applied 
to  the  situation  in  which  he  is  working.    Any- 

[337] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

one  who  has  looked  at  the  facts  of  modern  in- 
dustry can  cite  any  number  of  cases  in  which 
one  man  has  made  the  whole  difference  between 
success  and  failure  for  a  large  enterprise. 
Whether  or  not  it  is  advisable  to  pay  him  what  he 
earns  is  another  question.  Successful  vaudeville 
actors  are  very  likely  the  only  people  who  get 
approximately  all  they  earn. 


"SHEER   WEIGHT    OF   MONEY" 

THE    advertisement    of    some    articles    on 
"Why  Businesses  Win"  refers  to 

the  giant  corporations  which   have  won  by  sheer  weight  of 
money. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  imply  more  bad  eco- 
nomics, popular  untruth,  and  baseless  assump- 
tion in  fewer  words.  If  "sheer  weight  of  money" 
could  win,  the  New  York,  New  Haven  &  Hart- 
ford Railroad's  recently  abandoned  policies 
would  have  won  instead  of  scoring  disastrous 
failure.  Weight  of  money  cannot  keep  the  big 
mistakes  going.  The  smash  is  merely  post- 
poned, as  witness  the  historic  failures  of  Over- 
end,  Gurney  &  Co.,  Jay  Cooke  &  Co.,  the  great 
copper  pool  of  the  later  eighties.  Where  now 
are  the  leading  dry-goods  firms  of  New  York 

[388] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


City  before  the  Civil  War?  They  had  the  cus- 
tom, the  capital,  and  all  else,  but  of  the  two 
biggest  storekeepers  of  to-day  one  was  then  a 
hustling  young  Philadelphian  with  a  wheel-bar- 
row and  the  other  was  an  old  German  out  in 
Vincennes,  Ind.,  and  neither  "won  by  sheer 
weight  of  money."  The  plain  fact  is  that  behind 
all  commercial  forms  and  means,  behind  even  the 
most  glacier-like  aspects  of  the  market,  stand  the 
men  and  women  who  know,  who  bend  indifferent 
nature  and  careless  humanity  to  the  purpose  in 
hand,  who  get  the  work  done.  To  dodge  this 
fact  and  blame  failure  (your  own)  or  success 
(the  other  fellow's)  on  the  cash  instrument  is 
merely  a  business  version  of  the  old  scapegoat 
fallacy.  A  fool  with  a  bag  of  money  falls  fur- 
ther and  hits  harder — that's  all. 


PRICES    STILL    WILL    SOAR 

THE  great  rise  in  gold  production  began 
seventeen  years  ago.  Since  then  about  six 
billion  dollars'  worth  of  this  metal  has  been  taken 
from  the  ground.  It  is  very  hard  and  durable. 
Little  of  it  is  lost.  But  the  gold  stock  of  the 
world  shows  no  increase  of  six  billions;  perhaps 
not  more  than  three.  In  all  the  previous  cen- 
turies much  gold  was  produced.  The  known 
stock  in  '96  could  scarce  have  been  less  than 

[339] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

three  billions.  It  is  not  much  over  six  now. 
Where  has  the  rest  gone  ?  Hardly  into  the  arts. 
India,  Egypt,  and  like  countries  have  been  large 
absorbers.  Much  has  been  hoarded.  The  huge 
new  gold  supply,  then,  has  had  nothing  like  its 
full  natural  effect.  But  the  great  rise  in  land 
values  is  a  strong  discourager  of  hoarding. 
Spectacular  profits  make  speculators  of  us  all. 
If  there  should  be  less  hoarding,  and  the  present 
rate  of  production  hold,  the  effect  of  the  new 
gold  on  prices  might  be  much  greater  in  the  next 
seventeen  years  than  in  the  last.  Something  like 
this  was  certainly  true  in  the  fifties,  when  prices 
went  on  rising  for  ten  years  after  the  supply  had 
begun  to  fall.  A  severe  recession  in  business, 
causing  a  sharp  curtailment  of  bank  loans  and 
hence  of  credit  currency,  may  cause  a  temporary 
lowering  of  prices.  But  the  long  trend  should 
be  upward  for  years  to  come. 


THE    GREATEST    QUESTION 

A  FEW  shallow  persons  have  panaceas  for 
labor  troubles,  but  thoughtful  men,  with- 
out exception,  can  go  no  further  than  to  say  that 
they  do  not  see  the  ideal  solution.  Neither  the 
closed  shop  nor  the  open  shop  is  satisfactory,  and 
unions,  through  mistaken  loyalty  to  unworthy 
members,  have  it  in  their  power  not  only  to  in- 

[340] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


jure  the  public  as  a  whole,  but  also  to  betray  the 
best  interests  of  the  union  itself.  Take  the  re- 
cent strike  on  the  Delaware  &  Hudson.  There 
the  railway  management  had  discharged  two 
men  on  charges  of  incompetency.  The  em- 
ployees struck  until  their  presumably  inefficient 
comrades  should  be  reinstated.  After  a  twenty- 
four-hour  tie-up  the  railway  management  backed 
down.  Of  course  this  is  only  one  case  of  many 
— and  we  have  no  cure-all.  The  most  distin- 
guished foreign  commentator  on  American  af- 
fairs is  James  Bryce,  and  one  of  his  most  im- 
pressive recent  utterances  is  that  America's 
greatest  problem  is  the  relation  between  capital 
and  labor. 


GOMPERS    AND    PERSONAL    RIGHTS 

MR.  SAMUEL  GOMPERS  does  not  like 
one  of  our  editorials,  and  he  writes  to  tell 
us  so.  This  editorial,  he  declares,  finds  us  lined 
up  with  all  the  forces  and  organizations  for  greed 
and  labor  exploitation  which  are  resorting  to 
every  means  to  defeat  legislation  which  Ameri- 
can workers  have  declared  necessary  for  the  suc- 
cess of  their  organizations, 

Specifically,  Mr.  Gompers  does  not  like  what 
we  had  to  say  on  the  Bacon-Bartlett  Anti-In- 
junction Bill.    This  bill  seems  to  be  dead,  so  that 

[341] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

as  a  subject  for  an  editorial  it  is  no  longer  impor- 
tant. We  are  sorry,  however,  to  differ  with 
Mr.  Gompers.  We  do  not  propose  to  line  up 
with  anybody  in  particular  in  labor-law  matters. 
We  are  in  sympathy  with  the  aims  and  purposes 
of  labor  unions  and  entertain  no  prejudice 
against  them.  It  is  quite  true,  as  Mr.  Gompers 
intimates,  that  the  manufacturers'  organizations 
are  highly  organized  in  their  publicity  work. 
They  are  not  only  highly  organized,  but  as  asso- 
ciations they  are  not  always  broad-minded  and 
assume  far  too  complacently  that  the  whole  fu- 
ture of  American  industry  depends  upon  the 
substantial  demolition  of  labor  unions — a  propo- 
sition to  which  we  most  heartily  dissent.  We  try 
not  to  belong  either  to  the  Montagues  of  capital 
or  the  Capulets  of  labor.  It  is  impossible  to 
please  them  both  at  the  same  time,  and  this  seems 
to  be  one  of  the  occasions  when  we  do  not  please 
the  Capulet  party. 

Where  Collier's  and  Mr.  Gompers  seem  to 
differ  on  this  Anti-Injunction  Bill  is  mainly  in 
this  particular:  Mr.  Gompers  considers  that  the 
right  of  the  employee  to  work  or  not  to  work  is 
a  personal  right,  and  the  right  of  an  employer 
to  conduct  a  business  is  also  a  personal  right. 
From  this  premise  his  logic  then  bounds — and 
ours  does  not — to  the  conclusion  that  a  court  of 
equity  should  be  made  powerless  to  prevent  any 
act,  not  unlawful  in  itself,  if  done  by  one  indi- 

[342] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


vidual  alone,  from  being  done  by  a  combination 
of  workers,  by  which  the  right  of  the  employer 
to  do  business  is  crippled,  his  property  rendered 
idle,  and  his  business  destroyed.  In  other  words, 
Mr.  Gompers  believes  that  the  law  should  per- 
mit the  boycott,  the  secondary  boycott,  and,  in- 
cidentally, the  lockout.  We  do  not.  Mr.  Gom- 
pers differs  from  us  upon  the  important  ques- 
tion of  what  sort  of  weapons  should  be  permis- 
sible in  industrial  warfare,  considered  not  only 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  contending  parties, 
but  from  that  of  the  community,  which  also  has 
rights  which  someone  ought  to  respect.  We  do 
not  think  that  these  particular  weapons  would 
prove  in  the  long  run  to  be  essential  to  labor  or 
even  advantageous  to  it. 


THE    CURSE    OF    SMALL    BUSINESS 

THE  attention  of  those  who  believe  that  big 
business  is  necessarily  bad  and  that  small 
units  are  preferable  in  the  interest  of  the  com- 
munity is  invited  to  a  report  recently  made  to 
the  London  (England)  County  Council  on  Lon- 
don's electricity  supply.  Messrs.  Merz  &  Mc- 
Lellan,  a  famous  engineering  firm  which  has  built 
enormous  plants  at  Newcastle  and  elsewhere, 
find  that  England's  greatest  city  is  now  served 
by  sixty-five  companies  which  operate  seventy 

[343] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 

generating  stations  using  thirty-one  different 
systems  of  generation,  eight  different  frequen- 
cies, twenty-one  different  distributing  voltages, 
and  fifty  methods  of  charging  the  consumer  for 
what  he  gets.  The  waste  and  vexation  caused  by 
this  confusion  must  be  incalculable,  and  the  en- 
gineers propose  to  arrange  for  an  ultimate  sup- 
ply from  one  huge  generating  station  and  to  re- 
tire the  bric-a-brac  as  fast  as  possible.  The  trou- 
ble is  that  for  the  next  fifteen  years  the  savings 
thus  effected  must  be  spent  in  retiring  the  dead 
capital  already  invested,  so  that  the  consumer 
will  reap  no  immediate  gain. 

London  is  far  off,  but  the  example  is  a  huge 
one  and  easily  understood.  The  difficulty  with 
small-scale  business  is  that  it  thwarts  the  future. 
Business  must  be  regulated,  responsive  to  the 
public  interest  and  the  general  conscience,  but 
it  must  first  of  all  be  adequate  or  it  is  a  fail- 
ure. Any  service  fit  for  our  modern  com- 
munities must  be  a  service  of  foresight  and  lead- 
ership. 


A   WAR    OF   OUR    OWN 

AFTER  having  had  a  free  hand  at  excessive 
rates  for  half  a  century  or  more,  the  ex- 
press companies  were  suddenly  brought  up  with 
a  very  sharp  turn.    Under  the  new  law  the  Inter- 

[S44] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


state  Commerce  Commission  was  given  power  to 
revise  and  fix  their  rates,  and,  following  an  in- 
vestigation by  the  present  Secretary  Lane,  that 
power  was  drastically  exercised.  At  the  same 
time  came  the  new  parcel  post,  which  the  express 
companies'  lobby,  under  the  late  Senator  Platt, 
had  fought  for  years.  It  was  time  for  humble 
pie.  One  of  the  companies,  the  Wells-Fargo, 
has  left  off  talking  of  confiscations  and  murder, 
and  gone  practically  to  work  to  beat  the  Govern- 
ment at  its  own  game.  It  has  organized  a  su- 
perior parcels  service,  especially  for  the  collec- 
tion and  delivery  of  food  products.  This  is  a 
shrewd  move.  Industrial  agents  have  been  ap- 
pointed for  the  principal  cities.  And  their  busi- 
ness will  be  to  bring  the  farmer,  the  dairyman, 
and  fruit  grower  in  actual  contact  with  the  peo- 
ple of  the  cities.  It  is  the  elimination  of  the 
middleman;  the  direct  from-the-producer-to-the- 
consumer  business  gain.  It  is  computed  that, 
roughly,  on  every  dollar  of  food  products  the 
grower  gets  a  quarter,  the  companies  twenty 
cents,  the  wholesaler  five  cents.  And  the  retailer 
gets  half.  Now  the  expressman  will  call  at  your 
door,  take  your  order  for  so  many  Sunflower 
eggs,  so  much  Clover  Leaf  butter,  so  many  Ra- 
mona  oranges,  and  so  on,  and  in  due  course  these 
things  are  at  your  door.  The  company  collects, 
takes  its  toll,  and  gives  the  balance  to  the  pro- 
ducer.   This  is  intelligent  warfare.    Here  we  see 

[345] 


NATIONAL    FLOODM ARK S 

at  work  both  private  efficiency  and  collective  ef- 
fort. Incidentally,  governmental  competition  is 
already  doing  good. 


THE   HOUND    OF   HEAVEN 

IN  these  days  when  the  song  of  the  effi- 
ciency engineer  is  loud  in  the  land,  let  us 
beware  of  exaggerating  his  quality  at  the  ex- 
pense of  all  else.  Francis  Thompson  was  per- 
haps the  most  "inefficient"  human  being  in  Eu- 
rope. To  his  dying  day  he  was  unable  to  acquire 
the  slightest  regularity  in  the  mere  business  of 
living. 

His  [says  his  biographer,  Everard  Meynell]  was  a 
long  series  of  broken  trysts — trysts  with  the  sunrise,  trysts 
with  Sunday  mass,  obligatory  but  impossible;  trysts  with 
friends.  .  .  .  Dismayed,  he  would  emerge  from  his  room 
upon  a  household  preparing  for  dinner  when  he  had  lain 
listening  to  sounds  he  thought  betokened  breakfast. 

He  probably  never  earned  so  much  as  $2,000 
a  year,  and  had  it  not  been  for  his  friends  the 
Meynells  he  could  hardly  have  existed  even  the 
half  a  life  that  was  his:  he  died  at  forty-seven. 
Yet  he  wrote  some  of  the  finest  poetry  in  the 
English  tongue,  including  such  a  piece  of  genius 
as  "The  Hound  of  Heaven" — the  Odyssey  of 

[346] 


MATTERS     OF     BUSINESS 


that  divine  love  (of  which  human  love  is  an  as- 
pect) that  pursues  us  all  through  life: 

So,  all  things  fly  thee,  for  thou  fliest  Me!  .  .  . 

"Rise,  clasp  my  hand,  and  come!" 

Halts  by  me  that  footfall: 

Is  my  gloom,  after  all, 
Shade  of  His  hand,  outstretched  caressingly? 

"Ah,   fondest,  blindest,   weakest, 

I  am  He  whom  thou  seekest! 
Thou  dravest  love  from  thee,  who  dravest  Me!" 

What  could  the  efficiency  engineer  have  done 
for  Francis  Thompson? 


GETTING   RID    OF   TOIL 

WE  all  know  something  of  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery in  a  vague  way,  but  we  are  not 
likely  to  have  any  idea  of  the  ceaseless,  scientific, 
wide-reaching  improvement  that  goes  on  in  these 
devices.  Magnet  cranes  that  will  pick  up  and 
carry  five  tons  of  loose  scrap  iron ;  one-man  coal- 
handling  bridges  that  will  unload  five  hundred 
tons  of  coal  in  an  hour  so  that  you  can  see  the 
ship  rise  in  the  water;  lathes  in  which  ten  tools 
cut  into  two  pieces  of  steel  at  one  time  and  one 
man  runs  two  such  machines — these  are  only 
three  of  the  new  weapons  we  are  now  using  to 
conquer  the  world  of  things. 

What  are  we  going  to  do  with  it? 

[347] 


XX 

FORWARD 


LOOKING   AHEAD 

ELECTRICITY  is  no  more  powerful  to- 
day than  it  was  in  the  age  of  Columbus. 
We  have  only  put  a  saddle  and  bridle  to 
it,  and  ridden  it  to  market.  The  future  may  well 
smile  at  our  clumsy  horsemanship,  and  wonder 
why  we  were  so  slow  about  enslaving  the  ether 
waves  to  produce  "cold  light." 


BRIMSTONE   UPLIFTERS 

WHEN  the  backwoods,  hard-shell  type  of 
preacher  found  his  flock  getting  listless, 
he  used  to  rouse  their  zeal  and  restore  his  own 
self-confidence  by  venting  himself  in  a  real  old 
hell-fire  sermon.  Very  few  of  these  men  ever 
built  up  large  churches.  Their  life  work  was  to 
found  and  maintain  the  bitter  little  hating  sects 
that  did  so  much  to  distort  and  discredit  religion 
among  thinking  people.  Their  modem  successor 
is  the  brimstone  uplifter.    For  instance,  Messrs. 

[348] 


FORWARD  ! 

Forgan  and  Reynolds  are  doing  good  work  in 
the  Federal  Reserve  Bank  of  Chicago,  and  Rep- 
resentative Lindbergh  of  Minnesota  publishes 
the  most  childish  nonsense  about  the  "possibil- 
ity" of  their  abusing  their  trust  to  juggle  prices. 
He  cannot  understand  their  work,  so  he  vilifies  it. 
Mayor  Mitchel  of  New  York  City  appoints  an 
unemployment  committee  and  gets  various 
prominent  business  men  to  work  on  it.  And 
Amos  R.  E.  Pinchot  (Gifford  Pinchot  is  the 
tame  one)  writes  him  a  long  letter  denouncing 
the  men  and  the  project  and  breathing  fire  and 
brimstone  against  whatever  they  may  do.  The 
Federal  Government  puts  a  tax  of  one  cent  on 
certain  telephone  and  telegraph  messages,  and 
specifies  that  the  user  is  to  pay  it.  Thousands  of 
notices  to  this  effect,  signed  by  a  Government 
official,  are  posted  by  the  public  telephones,  and 
the  brimstoners  at  once  begin  to  yell  that  the 
corporations  have  found  a  fresh  pretext  to  rob 
the  people  for  their  own  gain!  This  country 
needs  all  the  fair  and  sane  criticism  that  it  can 
get.  There  is  much  to  be  done  and  many  changes 
to  be  made.  There  always  will  be.  But  we  will 
get  no  help  from  the  men  of  littleness  and  hatred. 
They  create  only  confusion  and  disgust;  they 
help  privilege,  not  progress.  It  is  good  will 
that  is  bringing  about  the  better  day. 


[349] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 


"FALLEN    ON   EVIL   DAYS" 

A  KEEN  observer  tells  us  that  "very  sel- 
dom in  the  history  of  the  world  had  the 
race  for  wealth  been  so  keen,  or  the  passion  for 
speculation  so  universal,  or  the  standard  of  pub- 
lic honesty  so  low."  This  is  the  verdict  of  Wil- 
liam Edward  Haetpole  Lecky  in  the  thir- 
teenth chapter  of  his  "History  of  England  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,"  and  he  is  writing  on  the 
condition  of  what  later  became  the  United  States 
in  the  year  1778.  The  point  is  of  interest  to  all 
of  us  who  are  too  apt  to  think  that  there  once 
were  good  times.  The  golden  age  of  honor  and 
of  achievement  is  now  and  it  is  ours. 


INSURANCE   AND   A    SONNET 

IT  is  always  difficult  to  keep  in  mind  two 
thoughts  on  the  same  subject  at  the  same 
time.  That  is  why  we  deem  it  necessary — while 
pointing  out,  with  some  insistence,  various  things 
which  ought  to  be  improved — to  reiterate  often 
that  the  world  is  better  to-day  than  it  ever  was 
before.  Sixty  years  ago,  in  England,  there  was 
a  Parliamentary  investigation  into  life  insurance. 
It  uncovered  conditions  compared  to  which  our 
present  scandals  are  peccadillos.    No  one  doubts, 

[350] 


FORWARD  ! 

for  example,  the  solvency  of  any  of  our  com- 
panies to-day.  Then  practically  none  was  sol- 
vent. Within  twenty-five  years  three  hundred 
companies  had  been  chartered  and  two  hundred 
and  fifty  of  them  had  failed.  The  bankruptcy 
courts  were  clogged  with  them.  "Life  insur- 
ance!" cried  Barry  Cornwall  to  Elizur 
Wright,  the  father  of  American  lif e  insurance. 
"Why,  it's  the  greatest  humbug  in  Christen- 
dom." And  for  the  most  part  it  was — frankly 
and  intentionally  a  swindle,  like  bucket-shops, 
discretionary  pools,  and  five  hundred  and  twenty 
per  cent  "investments"  to-day.  Life  insurance 
companies  were  what  Wright  called  his  book 
"Traps  Baited  With  Orphan."  The  business 
was  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  avowed  swindlers. 
Organizing  fraudulent  life  insurance  companies 
was  the  favorite  device  of  the  needy  and  con- 
scienceless nobility.  The  great  modern  principle 
of  surrender  values  had  not  then  been  recog- 
nized; if  you  had  been  paying  your  premiums  for 
twenty  or  thirty  years  and  found  yourself  unable 
to  continue,  you  could  get  nothing  from  the  com- 
pany. Your  course  would  be  to  go  to  the  Royal 
Exchange  on  Thursday  afternoon — this  sort  of 
thing  was  a  fixed  institution,  regularly  advertised 
in  the  newspapers — and  "sell  your  expectancy." 
One  of  the  gamblers  who  made  a  business  of  it 
would  look  you  over,  make  up  his  mind  how  long 
you  were  likely  to  live,  and  buy  your  policy. 

[351] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

Thereafter  he  watched  with  eager  hope  for  your 
demise.  In  the  meantime  he  paid  the  premiums 
and  at  your  death  collected  the  principal.  One 
who  had  seen  both  said  that  these  Thursday  af- 
ternoon sales  at  the  Royal  Exchange  were  a  far 
more  cruel  and  pathetic  spectacle  than  the  Ameri- 
can slave  auctions.  It  was  about  this  time  that 
Charles  Dickens,  in  "Martin  Chuzzlewit," 
wrote  his  famous  satire  on  Mr.  Montague  Tigg's 
"Anglo-Bengalee  Disinterested  Loan  and  Life 
Insurance  Company,"  with  a  "paid-up  capital 
of  a  figure  2  and  as  many  oughts  after  it  as  the 
printer  can  get  in  the  same  line,"  with  its  imagi- 
nary list  of  directors,  its  costly  furniture  on  the 
most  lavish  scale,  its  lunches  and  wines  served  in 
the  directors'  room,  and  for  secretary  David, 
tapster  at  the  Lombard  Arms,  "at  eight  hundred 
pounds  per  annum  and  house  rent,  coals,  and 
candles  free" — how  like  the  McCuedys  this 
sounds !  As  Ho  wells  says,  in  one  of  the  best  of 
his  sonnets: 

But  still,  somehow,  the  round 
Is  spiral,  and  the  race's  feet  have  found 
The  path  rise  under  them  which  they  have  trod. 

Sixty  years  hence,  doubtless,  there  will  be  an- 
other investigation  into  life  insurance,  when  a 
more  prosperous  and  happy  people  will  grow  in- 
dignant at  things  which  seem  to-day  but  doubt- 
ful ethics. 

[352] 


FORWARD  ! 


FINDING   OUT 


A  BELLIGERENT  apostle  of  peace  and 
quiet  calls  for  the  swift  and  permanent 
elimination  of  all  political  and  professional  in- 
vestigators. "Whatever  comes  of  an  investiga- 
tion?" he  demands.  "Nothing  is  ever  done.  No- 
body is  ever  punished.  Millions  of  useless  and 
troublesome  words  get  into  print,  and  that's  the 
end  of  it." 

Not  quite  the  end.  There  is  one  result:  in- 
tangible, immeasurable.  The  public  gets  infor- 
mation. When  Congress  investigates  the  lobby, 
and  the  lobby  and  its  employers  dig  impas- 
sionedly  into  each  other's  mutual  records,  the 
man  on  the  street  sees  a  gleam  of  light  shed  on 
the  underground  government.  When  Tammany 
impeached  Sulzer,  the  sheeplike  voter  learned  a 
little  something  about  the  kind  of  men  he  has 
foisted  upon  him  by  the  bosses — and  used  his 
information  at  the  polls.  Information  is  strong 
meat  for  the  human  sheep.  In  the  last  few  years 
America  has  been  absorbing  information  in  con- 
siderable dosage.  The  "investigation  mania" 
is  not  purely  a  Congressional  epidemic.  Rather 
it  is  the  voicing  of  a  nation-wide  desire  to  under- 
stand what's  what  in  our  Government,  and  why. 


[853] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 


AN  INTERLOCKING  BOSS— AND  THE 
DIRECTORS 

LOUIS  KUEHNLE  ruled  for  almost 
twenty  years  as  boss  of  business  and  poli- 
tics in  Atlantic  City.  That  makes  his  going  to 
Trenton  to  serve  a  sentence  in  the  penitentiary 
all  the  more  spectacular.  Says  the  Philadelphia 
"North  American": 

He  not  only  was  genial  in  personality,  but  he  had  qual- 
ities of  genuine  warm-heartedness  and  kindliness.  He  con- 
tributed to  every  charity.  It  was  a  common  thing  for  him 
to  buy  railroad  tickets  for  stranded  visitors.  These  traits 
gave  him  a  strong  hold  upon  the  populace. 

But  his  political  power  came  less  from  the  voters  than 
from  the  interests  which  he  served.  The  system  he  ope- 
rated was  created  by  special  privilege;  he  was  simply  the 
instrument.  Thus  Kuehnle's  conviction  alone  was  not  suf- 
ficient to  teach  the  lesson  of  the  supremacy  of  the  law. 
Every  bank  and  corporation  in  which  he  had  held  office 
promptly  reelected  him.  No  man  shunned  him.  And  when 
he  appeared  in  court  for  sentence  it  was  with  petitions  for 
clemency  signed  by  hundreds  of  bankers,  merchants,  pro- 
fessional men,  and  clergymen. 

But  the  sentence  was  a  prison  term;  and  as  the  convic- 
tion was  upheld  by  one  after  another  of  the  higher  courts, 
it  dawned  upon  the  supporters  of  bossism  that  the  time 
when  they  could  successfully  defy  the  whole  State  had 
passed. 

What  Kuehnle  did  was  to  plunge  both  hands 
into  the  treasury  and  (as  a  municipal  official) 

[354] 


FORWARD ! 

award  himself  (as  a  contractor)  contracts  and 
cash.  Now,  the  truth  is  that  more  than  half  the 
great  fortunes  in  the  United  States,  except  those 
built  up  through  manufacturing,  have  been  made 
in  exactly  the  same  way.  The  easy  way  to  big 
money  has  been  for  a  man  (as  director  in  a  rail- 
road or  other  corporation)  to  vote  to  himself  (as 
a  banker,  or  owner  of  a  coal  mine,  or  seller  of 
equipment)  contracts  and  cash.  In  ethics,  in 
economics,  the  crime  of  Kuehnle  is  no  worse 
than  these  performances  of  interlocking  public- 
utility  directors.  Mr.  Brandeis  puts  the  ques- 
tion very  simply  in  sixteen  short  Anglo-Saxon 
words : 

Can  there  be  real  bargaining  where  the  same  man  is  on 
both  sides  of  a  trade? 

These  practices  have  always  been  morally 
wrong.  By  virtue  of  the  present  Administra- 
tion at  Washington,  they  are  to  be  made  legally 
wrong  and  will  be  given  the  stigma  that  goes 
with  a  jail  sentence. 


MILESTONES 

ONE  thing  that  will  make  for  clearness  and 
sanity,  and  for  charity  where  needed,  is 
to  recall  how  much  has  happened  in  ten  years. 
In  1902  there  was  no  Pure  Food  Law  at  all; 

[355] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMABKS 

you  could  fill  a  can  with  common  brown  sugar, 
adorn  it  with  a  picture  of  a  Green  Mountain  log 
cabin  and  a  tree,  and  call  it  "Pure  Vermont 
Maple  Sugar." 

In  1902  there  was  no  sentiment  against  cam- 
paign contributions,  and  the  fat  fryer  was  a  na- 
tional hero. 

In  1902  half  the  public  men  in  Washington 
were  indorsing  Peruna  or  other  patent  medicines 
in  the  public  prints. 

In  1902  Collier's  was  printing  beer  and  whisky 
advertisements  (and  a  few  years  earlier  patent 
medicines  and  palmists). 

In  1902  nine-tenths  of  the  editors  and  public 
men  in  the  country  were  riding  on  railroad  passes 
and  assuming  the  obligation  implied. 

So  let's  be  charitable.  It's  an  age  of  quickly 
changing  standards.  What  was  merely  a  cry  in 
the  wilderness  in  1902  is  the  criminal  statute  of 
1912.  Who  knows  but  for  what  we  do  to-day  in 
the  bosoms  of  approving  families  we  may  yet  be 
crucified  by  some  austere  young  moralist  of 
1922? 

HEADWAY 

IN  our  judgment  no  more  important  headline 
has  appeared  in  any  American  newspaper 
during  the  present  year  than  this  from  the  New 
York  "Sun": 

[356] 


FORWARD  ! 


DAYTON    ASKS    GOETHALS    TO    BE    CITY 

MANAGER 

Panama   Canal  Builder  May  Name  Hia  Own  Salary 

Up  to  $25,000 

It  matters  little  whether  Colonel  Goethals 
wants  the  job  or  whether  the  War  Department 
is  willing  to  release  him  to  take  it.  The  signifi- 
cant thing  is  that  a  fairly  large  American  city  has 
come  to  the  point  where  it  is  willing  to  hire  an 
expert  executive  to  manage  its  affairs.  It  is 
many  a  milestone  from  this  back  to  the  system 
of  partisan  mayors  and  cumbrous  partisan  alder- 
manic  bodies  still  obtaining  in  almost  all  Ameri- 
can cities. 


A   LANDMARK 

THE  election  of  John  Purroy  Mitchel 
and  his  colleagues  to  the  government  of 
New  York  City  is  a  landmark  in  the  regenera- 
tion of  politics  in  our  greatest  State.  It  is  a  great 
event  in  the  development  of  expert  community 
administration  in  this  country.  The  atrocious 
combination  which  infests  New  York  and  many 
other  big  cities — the  combination  of  those  who 
live  by  "politics"  with  those  who  put  property 
above  human  welfare,  and  those  who  practice 
crime — has  been  signally  defeated.    New  York 

[357] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

City  is  getting  that  greatest  of  all  political  as- 
sets, a  group  of  able,  honest  men  who  are  widely 
and  accurately  known  and  are  judged  at  their 
real  worth.  Public  opinion  is  here  informed  by 
a  group  of  papers  supporting  these  men  which 
circulate  over  a  million  copies  a  day.  Omitting 
the  Hearst  publications,  the  papers  opposed  do 
not  circulate  one-tenth  of  this  number.  Here 
we  see  the  basis  of  knowledge  and  worth  upon 
which  a  great  community  will  build  its  future. 
The  greatest  city  of  the  New  World  is  going 
forward  and  the  track  ahead  is  clear. 


WATCH   OREGON 

ONE  advantage  of  our  system  of  State  gov- 
ernments is  the  opportunity  for  experi- 
ment. The  younger  States  try  out  radical  pro- 
posals, and  if  the  innovation  works,  and  is  adap- 
table to  other  communities,  it  is  only  a  question 
of  time  till  it  is  adopted  in  the  skeptical  East. 
The  Industrial  Welfare  Commission  of  Oregon 
has  made  a  ruling,  which  becomes  law  on  Novem- 
ber 23,  fixing  a  minimum  wage  of  $9.25  a  week 
for  adult  women  clerks  who  are  not  apprentices ; 
defining  eight  hours  and  twenty  minutes  as  the 
maximum  day's  -work,  and  fifty  hours  as  the 
maximum  for  a  week;  and  establishing  6  p.  m. 
as  the  latest  hour  at  which  any  woman  may  be 

[358] 


FORWARD  ! 

employed  in  a  mercantile  establishment  on  any 
day  of  the  year.  This  order  automatically  elimi- 
nates Saturday  night  shopping  and  late  hours 
of  shopping  in  the  Christmas  season,  and  was  re- 
sisted by  most  of  the  department  stores.  Keep 
your  eyes  on  Oregon  and  on  the  workings  of  this 
new  legislation. 


LUX 

EVERY  generation  raises  its  crop  of  fine  old 
crusted  Tories — some  of  them  in  the  hum- 
bler walks  of  life.  And  at  all  times,  and  instinc- 
tively, they  oppose  light — even  as  they  once  tried 
to  resist  lighting  what  Longfellow  called  the 
"street  lamps  of  the  ocean."  The  instance  we 
have  in  mind  is  noted  in  Emerson's  "Journal." 
Sixty  years  ago  the  philosopher  visited  Nauset, 
on  Cape  Cod.  "Collins,  the  keeper,  told  us  he 
found  resistance  on  Cape  Cod  to  the  project  of 
building  a  lighthouse  on  this  coast,  as  it  would 
injure  the  wrecking  business" 

Did  you  ever  stop  to  think  that  our  lighthouses 
have  utterly  ruined  what  used  to  be  a  vested  in- 
terest? 


[359] 


XXI 

HOME  MATTERS 


IS   THAT   SO? 

APROPOS  of  too  many  divorces,  we  find 
this  key  in  "Thoughts  on  Various  Sub- 
jects," by  Jonathan  Swift: 

The  reason  why  so  few  marriages  are  happy  is  because 
young  ladies  spend  their  time  in  making  nets,  and  not  in 
making  cages. 


CHILDREN 

YOU  who  have  children  are  the  blessed  ones ; 
you  who  open  sleepy  eyes  in  the  gray  dawn 
of  Christmas  morning  to  see  a  small  face  round 
with  excitement  peering  through  the  bedroom 
door  and  hear  from  the  next  room  treble  shouts 
of  "Merry  Christmas"  and  the  scampering  of 
little  feet.  You  are  the  happy  ones  about  whose 
Christmas  tree  the  gifts  are  mostly  toys.  There 
are  so  many  who  have  no  children.     So  many 

[360] 


HOME     MATTERS 


homeless  people  in  city  boarding  houses,  in  vil- 
lage cottages,  in  mines,  in  camps,  in  offices;  so 
many  lonely  women  robbed  of  their  heritage;  so 
many  barren  in  body  or  in  spirit,  to  whom  home 
is  but  a  dwelling  place  and  the  future  only  a 
dream.  You  about  whose  skirts  little  hands  are 
clinging  are  the  ones  to  whom  a  Christmas  really 
comes.  When  in  the  dusk  of  Christmas  Day  the 
curtains  are  drawn  over  the  holly  wreaths,  and 
the  fire  throws  a  soft  light  among  the  yuletide 
evergreens,  flickering  on  the  shining  tree  around 
which  the  gifts  lie  scattered,  when  a  little  head 
rests  wearily  against  the  father's  knee  with  the 
utter  trust  of  childhood,  and  a  soft,  tired  body 
snuggles  up  against  the  mother's  breast,  then  is 
life  justified.  The  memory  of  a  hard  and  lonely 
past  may  bring  unnoticed  tears,  the  fear  of  an 
uncertain  future  may  sober  the  smile,  but  this 
moment  at  least  is  a  perfect  one.  The  world  may 
roll  on  with  its  wars  and  wickedness  and  misery, 
kingdoms  may  go  and  governments  may  come, 
philosophies  and  religions  may  wax  and  wane, 
but  to  you  at  least  is  this  life  worth  living,  and 
to  you  is  immortality  assured. 


[861] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM ARKS 


'ARE  YOU   CHEERFUL   TO-DAY? 

OF  course  the  trouble  is  that  room  in  which 
you  started  the  day's  grouch  with  break- 
fast. For  "if  the  family  dining  room  be  large 
enough  to  be  appropriate  for  the  serving  of  large 
dinners,  it  is  likely  to  be  too  formal  and  a  bit 
lonely  for  breakfast  for  one  or  two  persons." 
We  grab  this  life  saver  from  a  softy-sweety  page 
in  the  New  York  "Tribune,"  entitled  "Woman's 
Varied  Interests."  What  is  the  solution  of  this 
problem?  Can  one  seek  companionship  in  an 
eggl  The  "Tribune"  gives  the  answer:  Have  a 
breakfast  room!  Have  it  as  different  as  possible 
from  the  dining  room ;  small,  intimate,  cheerful, 
convenient  to  the  pantry,  not  too  far  from  the 
kitchen,  full  in  the  morning  sun,  and  extremely 
simple — oh,  beyond  words,  simple!  Gray  or 
cream  walls,  "chiefly  of  glass,"  furniture  and 
woodwork  of  the  same  select  tints,  a  few  quiet 
rugs,  and  nothing  ornate  about  the  linen,  silver, 
glass,  and  china.  Just  the  merest  fresh  little 
nook  where  one  can  spoon  his  mush  and  look 
over  the  scores  with  that  unaffected  brightness 
of  heart  which  is  so  difficult  amid  tapestry  and 
butlers.  Lest  one's  imagination  fail  to  get  it,  the 
artist  offers  a  four-column  cut  of  a  radiant  cor- 
ner about  fifteen  feet  high  and  chastely  furnished 
with  palms,  orchids,  etc.    The  bright  vista  pre- 

[362] 


HOME     MATTERS 


sented  is  labeled  enticingly:  "This  loggia  is  but 
an  elaboration  of  the  use  of  an  inclosed  veranda 
as  a  morning  room."  No  doubt  it  is  the  log- 
giacal  next  step,  but  we  can't  decide  whether  to 
have  our  breakfast  room  in  the  closet  or  on  the 
fire  escape.  The  first  is  more  intimate,  but  the 
second  gets  the  morning  sun.  It  is  rather  a  puz- 
zle, and  we  hate  to  bother  the  "Tribune,"  but  we 
do  want  to  get  that  "certain  brightness  of  out- 
look."   Please  advise. 


MATTERS    OF    TASTE 

A  BUDDHIST    priest   of  the   fourteenth 
century  sums  up  the  things  that  make  bad 
taste : 

1.  Too  much  furniture  in  one's  living  room.  2.  Too 
many  pens  in  a  stand.  3.  Too  many  Buddhas  in  a  private 
shrine.  4.  Too  many  rocks,  trees,  and  herbs  in  a  garden. 
5.  Too  many  children  in  a  house.  6.  Too  many  words 
when  men  meet.  7-  Too  many  books  in  a  bookcase  there 
can  never  be,  nor  too  much  litter  in  a  dust  heap. 

This  author  was  a  Japanese  named  Kenko, 
and  he  lived  in  the  time  of  Chaucer  and  Dante. 
We  have  made  improvements  since  then,  but  in 
matters  of  taste  Mr.  Kenko  compares  favorably 
with  some  housekeepers  we  know.  There  is  a 
question  about  number  five  in  his  list  of  surfeits 

[363] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEKS 

— but  the  birth  rate  was  higher  in  the  fourteenth 
century  than  it  is  to-day. 


UNION    HOURS   FOR   THE    WIFE 

FEMINISM  by  all  means — only  that 
doesn't  commit  one  to  accepting  every  state- 
ment advanced  by  Mme.  Inez  Milholland 
Boissevain.  Take  her  remark  the  other  day 
about  ten  minutes  in  every  twenty-four  hours 
being  enough  for  "keeping  house."  Now,  ten 
minutes  may  do  in  a  Manhattan  apartment  house 
where  babies  are  against  the  law,  but  who  calls 
running  a  Manhattan  apartment  "housekeep- 
ing"? In  our  town  there  are  no  uniformed  hall- 
boys  to  fall  back  on ;  no  speaking  tubes  or  dumb- 
waiters or  "maid  service  included"  in  the  lease. 
One  cannot  have  breakfast  brought  to  one's  bed 
for  the  asking;  some  time,  somehow,  that  break- 
fast has  to  be  cooked.  The  housekeeper  in  our 
town  is  a  home  maker.  She  has  mending  to  do, 
and  stops  letter  writing  or  preparing  a  club  pa- 
per on  H.  G.  Wells  to  kiss  a  "hurted  place" 
and  make  it  well.  Mrs.  Inez's  flippancy  about 
ten  minutes  a  day  doing  for  keeping  house  is  a 
crying  injustice  to  the  best,  the  most  efficient, 
the  most  lovable  of  all  "feminists."  It  isn't 
even  on  a  par  with  the  Kaiser's  "three  K's"  in- 
eptitude— Kirk,  Kitchen,  and  Kids.    We  should 

[364] 


HOME     MATTERS 


live  divided  between  a  very  present  fear  of  pto- 
maine poisoning  and  a  recurrent  dread  of  death 
by  slow  starvation — if  ours  were  a  ten-minute-a- 
day  wife. 


MOTHERS   AS    TEACHERS 

SCHOOL  circles  have  been  very  much  inter- 
ested in  the  recent  decision  of  the  Board  of 
Education  of  New  York  City,  which  decreed 
that  a  certain  Mrs.  Edgell,  an  efficient  instruc- 
tor in  physical  culture,  should  not  be  allowed  a 
year's  leave  of  absence  to  bear  a  child.  This 
means  that  every  teacher  must  remain  either  sin- 
gle or  childless,  or  lose  her  job  altogether,  or  re- 
sort to  ridiculous  subterfuges,  such  as  a  plea  of 
ill  health. 

The  reasons  for  this  decision  reduced  them- 
selves to  two.  One  was  the  impossibility  of 
modifying  the  red  tape  in  regard  to  pensions  and 
substitutes,  a  reason  which  caused  many  caustic 
comments  from  unsympathetic  laymen  on  the 
pedagogue's  worship  of  routine.  The  other  rea- 
son seemed  to  be  the  conviction  that  maternity 
would  so  disorganize  a  woman's  instructive  and 
disciplinary  faculties  that  she  would  never  again 
make  a  good  teacher.  Also,  what  would  happen 
if  all  the  teachers  did  the  same  thing? 

The  whole  discussion,  aside  from  its  bearing 

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NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

on  race  suicide,  seems  to  be  founded  on  two  falla- 
cies. One  is  the  assumption  that  the  best  teacher 
is  the  one  who  can  inculcate  into  her  pupils  the 
greatest  amount  of  routine  work  and  discipline 
rather  than  the  person  who  has  the  maximum  of 
human  understanding  and  guiding  wisdom. 
Which  would  you  rather  have  for  your  children's 
teacher,  an  efficient  machine  or  an  intelligent  hu- 
man? What  is  more  conducive  to  wisdom  than 
maternity?  The  other  fallacy  is  that  the  schools 
are  for  the  teachers,  not  the  teachers  for  the 
schools.  Our  present  dollar  diplomacy  and  con- 
sideration for  impecunious  young  ladies  has 
caused  the  education  of  the  young,  boys  and  girls 
alike,  to  fall  almost  entirely  into  the  hands  of 
young  celibate  women.  And  the  above  incident 
looks  as  if  the  condition  were  to  be  fostered  by 
every  possible  device. 

It  has  sometimes  occurred  to  us  that  if  all 
the  young  women  could  be  eliminated  from 
the  schools,  and  the  teaching  be  put  into  the 
hands  of  elderly  married  women  whose  own  chil- 
dren were  safely  launched,  the  real  educative 
value  of  our  schools  would  be  increased.  After 
all,  the  schools  exist  for  the  children. 


[366] 


HOME     MATTERS 


SANTA   CLAUS   AND    OTHERS 

THERE  is  nothing  truer  than  a  fairy  tale. 
It  is  the  quintessence  of  what  Aristotle 
calls  the  probable  impossibility.  The  best  of  the 
fairy  tales  are  folklore,  giving  the  boiled-down 
wisdom  of  centuries  of  experience,  and  the  truths 
they  teach  are  the  old,  old  facts  of  human  nature 
put  into  tangible  form  for  childish  minds  to 
grasp.  These  tales  do  not  teach  morals  by  pre- 
cept, but  truths  by  example.  In  "Snow  White," 
now  upon  the  stage,  the  selfish,  jealous  queen 
loses  her  beauty  as  a  result  of  her  wickedness. 
That  she  grows  a  long,  crooked  nose  instead  of 
hard  eyes  and  a  discontented  mouth  in  no  way 
changes  the  truth  that  ugly  characters  beget  ugly 
countenances — it  merely  makes  it  obvious  to 
young,  unsubtle  minds.  No  amount  of  teaching 
about  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  Christmas 
kindness,  and  the  rewards  of  virtue,  can  have  such 
an  effect  on  the  small,  objective  soul  as  is  pro- 
duced by  the  vision  of  Santa  Claus  with  his 
white  beard  and  twinkly  eyes  coming  with  toys 
for  good  little  boys  and  switches  for  bad  little 
boys.  Long  years  from  now,  when  every  in- 
cident of  these  stories  is  lost  to  the  memory,  the 
knowledge  of  fundamental  human  values  will  re- 
main. Teach  the  children  fairy  tales  and  you 
teach  them  the  wisdom  of  the  ages. 

[367] 


NATIONAL     FLOODM  ABKS 


HOW  ABOUT    SEX? 

THERE  are  many  indications  that  the  prob- 
lem of  what  to  tell  our  maturing  young 
people  is  going  to  be  given  an  answer  within  the 
next  few  years.  In  current  discussions  the  posi- 
tion taken  seems  to  depend  very  largely  upon  the 
speaker's  fundamental  belief  as  to  the  impor- 
tance of  chastity.  This  means  that  we  are  at- 
tempting to  handle  a  practical  problem  from  the 
most  theoretical  standpoint.  It  seems  clear  that 
experience  so  far  shows  that  this  whole  problem 
of  sex  had  better  be  approached  in  the  spirit  of 
personal  reserve  and  reverence  for  personal  re- 
lations that  we  associate  with  the  better  sort  of 
home  life  rather  than  in  the  spirit  of  eager  curi- 
osity and  practical  experimentation  that  we  as- 
sociate with  the  schools.  The  psychologists  are 
welcome  to  their  endless  wrangles  as  to  the  pre- 
cise extent  to  which  sex  discussion  arouses,  in 
those  discussing  sex,  cravings  which  might  other- 
wise remain  dormant,  but  it  is  certain  that  the 
average  young  medical  student's  first  acquaint- 
ance with  obstetrics  is  not  a  force  making  for 
personal  or  social  purity.  The  contrary  is  far  too 
often  the  case.  Any  system  of  instruction  which 
gives  a  knowledge  of  sex  hygiene  merely  as  me- 
chanical knowledge  will  be  a  gigantic  mistake. 
Any  instructors  given  this  responsibility  must 

[368] 


HOME     MATTERS 


have  the  spiritual  force  to  conquer  the  problem 
and  the  personality  to  compel  their  pupils  to 
reverence.  Anything  less  will  be  instruction  for 
dogs,  not  for  human  beings. 


HOSPITALITY 

OUR  way  of  living  has  changed,  but  through 
all  the  shifting  phases  of  the  human  fam- 
ily, the  essence  of  hospitality  has  remained  the 
same — to  break  bread  and  to  converse.  There 
have  been  hundreds  of  innovations  in  the  way 
of  entertaining  one's  guests — monkey  dinners, 
barnyard  dances,  vaudeville,  amateur  plays,  and 
games — but  these  are  free  shows,  not  hospitality. 
Hospitality  is  enjoying  with  others  that  which 
is  our  own;  dividing  with  them  bread  for  the 
body,  sharing  with  them  experiences  and  fancies 
of  the  mind.  True  hospitality  is  where  one  from 
the  outside  is  welcomed  into  the  home  circle.  He 
brings  with  him  something  of  thought  and  fel- 
lowship which  he  leaves  in  that  home;  he  takes 
away  with  him  a  share  of  the  cheer  and  warmth 
of  the  fireside.  To  sit  down  together  and  break 
bread  and  then  sit  together  before  the  fire  and 
talk  of  that  which  has  happened  on  pilgrimage, 
and  speculate  on  what  is  yet  to  come:  that, 
whether  in  an  Indian's  wigwam  or  a  baron's 
castle,  is  the  end  and  soul  of  hospitality. 

[369] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 


A  FEW  OF  HIM  WOULD   MAKE  A   MUCKLE 

A  READER  dug  the  following  letter  out  of 
Brother  Victor  Rose  water's  Omaha 
"Bee,"  and  sent  it  in  to  us  in  a  recent  morning's 
mail: 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Bee": 

It  is  a  sad  thing  to  see  poor,  silly  people  of  the  twentieth 
century  complaining  of  the  high  cost  of  living  and  saying 
they  can't  live  on  salaries  of  $600  all  the  way  up  to  $6,000. 
For  fifteen  years  my  salary  has  ranged  from  $30  to  $60, 
and  I  have  a  good  sum  of  money  in  the  bank,  a  wife  and 
six  children.  I  manage  things  on  a  common-sense  basis. 
No  foolishness.  Nickels  spent  on  moving  pictures  and 
candy  and  ice  cream  are  wasted.  Money  spent  on  finery 
is  wasted. 

In  my  family  we  have  nothing  in  the  way  of  luxuries — 
just  the  plain  everyday  food.  I  do  the  buying  myself. 
Cereals,  oatmeal,  and  similar  foods  form  the  bulk  of  our 
diet.  We  buy  one  pound  of  steak  a  week.  I  have  a  piece 
of  it  every  day  because  I  need  meat  to  sustain  my  strength 
for  my  work.  The  rest  of  the  family  do  not  need  meat — 
in  fact,  are  better  off  without  it.  The  only  luxury  we  buy 
is  tobacco,  and  the  cost  of  that  comes  to  only  forty  cents  a 
week.  We  save  much  on  buying  bread  that  is  a  day  old, 
thus  increasing  the  buying  power  of  our  money  100  per 
cent.  Cheese  I  find  a  good  substitute  for  butter  and  more 
nutritious,  as  well  as  costing  only  half  as  much.  It  is  a 
very  simple  thing  to  raise  a  family  on  a  small  salary  if  a 
man  just  has  common  sense  and  doesn't  leave  the  buying 
to  his  wife,  and  sees  to  it  that  tradesmen  give  him  a  dollar's 
worth  for  every  dollar  he  spends.     I  have  only  been  in 

[370] 


HOME     MATTERS 


Omaha  a  year,  but  I  guarantee  I  have  made  my  money  go 
further  than  any  other  workingman  in  the  city,  and  I  can 
prove  it  if  necessary.  A.  B.  Mickle. 

Our  stenographer  passed  this  in  to  us  with  the 
following  comment: 

People  read  this  sort  of  thing  and  then  wonder  why  some 
of  us  prefer  to  remain  old  maids ! 

Well,  there's  a  good  deal  to  be  said  on  that. 
In  the  first  place,  if  our  stenographer  were  Mrs. 
Mickle,  we  think  something  sudden  and  sur- 
prising would  happen  in  the  Mickle  family.  In 
the  second  place,  a  home  and  six  children,  even 
with  Mr.  Mickle  thrown  in,  are  better  than  be- 
ing an  old  maid.  Finally,  we  want  to  know  more 
about  Mickle.  Maybe  he  wrote  the  letter  in 
irony.  Maybe  he  doesn't  exist.  Maybe  one  of 
the  "Bee's"  bright  young  men  invented  him  to 
add  to  the  gayety  of  nations.  Won't  Brother 
Rosewater  be  kind  enough,  at  our  request,  to 
send  one  of  his  reporters  out  to  see  Mr.  Mickle 
and  tell  the  world  about  him?  If  he  is  a  real 
human  being,  there  are  a  lot  of  things  we  should 
like  to  say  about  him,  and  not  all  of  them  to  his 
discredit.  His  ideas  are  not  all  bad.  When  he 
eats  all  the  meat  in  the  family  he  may  be  doing 
the  rest  of  the  family  a  real  service.  The  main 
point  in  which  he  is  all  wrong  is  his  distrust  of 
his  wife  in  the  matter  of  buying.  His  case  may 
be  an  exception,  but  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the 
wife  is  a  better  buyer  than  the  husband. 

[371] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARK8 

After  all  is  said  and  done,  the  outstanding  fact 
about  Mickle  is  that  he  went  and  did  it.  He 
did  many  and  he  did  raise  a  family.  For  that 
achievement,  compared  to  him,  all  the  whining 
young  men  who  complain  they  can't  afford  it 
are  merely  objects  of  varying  degrees  of  con- 
tempt. 


[372] 


XXII 
THE  PLAY-ACTORS 


A   FORECAST 

INEXPRESSIVENESS  is  the  cardinal 
fault  of  our  theater.  The  typical  "popular" 
play  of  to-day  not  only  fails  to  repre- 
sent American  life,  but  does  not  even  mimic  it 
successfully.  At  most  it  offers  a  patchy  travesty 
of  the  paltriest  phases  of  our  national  character : 
a  sort  of  hodgepodge  of  incoherent  Cohanism 
shot  through  with  the  strains  of  "The  Star- 
Spangled  Banner."  For  those  who  believe  that 
the  stage  may  rise  from  its  present  status  of  a 
dollar-in-the-slot  machine  without  conscience  or 
real  intelligence,  and  become  an  educational  and 
inspirational  force,  Percy  Mackaye's  vivid  and 
suggestive  volume,  "The  Civic  Theatre,"  will 
stand  at  once  as  creed  and  guidepost.  Repertory 
theaters,  experimental  theaters,  and  municipal 
stock  companies  have  been  tried  with  varying 
success.  What  Mr.  Mackaye  advocates  is  far 
in  advance  of  these:  a  theater  publicly  and  last- 
ingly endowed,  under  the  management  of  a  per- 
manent staff  of  artists,  recruiting  its  forces  from 

[373] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

the  public  which  owns  it,  and  giving  the  best  at 
a  price  within  the  reach  of  all.  Popular  educa- 
tion, he  believes,  would  create  a  popular  demand 
for  plays  of  genuine  artistry  and  merit: 

From  ocean  to  ocean  a  mighty  chain  of  theaters,  State 
and  municipal.  Forty  or  more  State  theaters — from  the 
Theater  of  California  to  the  Theater  of  Massachusetts — 
publicly  endowed  on  the  precedent  of  Wisconsin  Univer- 
sity. A  thousand  municipal  theaters — from  the  Theater  of 
San  Francisco  to  the  Theater  of  Boston — publicly  en- 
dowed on  the  precedent  of  the  College  of  the  City  of  New 
York.  Leading  and  harmonizing  these,  one  national  thea- 
ter at  Washington,  endowed  by  the  Federal  Government. 

Thus  Mr.  Mackaye's  vision.  Would  his  plan, 
if  established,  supplant  the  commercial  theater? 
He  thinks  not.  But  he  believes  the  commercial 
managers  would,  by  reason  of  improved  public 
standards  of  judgment  and  taste,  be  forced  to 
raise  their  own  standards,  both  of  art  and  ethics. 
Not  the  least  interesting  suggestion  of  the  book 
is  that,  wherever  possible,  these  theaters  be  en- 
dowed under  the  trusteeship  of  adjacent  univer- 
sities. Since  a  college  professor  has  become 
President  of  the  United  States,  "academic"  is 
less  a  term  of  derision  than  formerly.  A  future 
is  well  within  the  possibilities,  wherein  the  man- 
agers who  decide  for  us  what  plays  we  may  have 
opportunity  of  seeing  will  be  men  of  culture, 
reading,  and  trained  thought  instead  of  ex-prize- 

[374] 


THE     PLAY-ACTORS 


fight  conductors  and  graduates  of  the  betting 
ring. 

THE   NEW   GENERATION 

IMAGINE,  if  you  please,  a  tiny  stage,  with 
homemade  footlights  and  a  jerky  curtain, 
across  what  used  to  be  the  back  parlor  of  an  old- 
fashioned  New  York  house.  Facing  it  from  the 
front  parlor,  an  audience  from  the  neighboring 
tenements,  Italian  women  mostly,  mothers  of 
many  children;  on  the  stage  their  sons,  boys  of 
fifteen  or  eighteen,  acting  Galsworthy's  "Jus- 
tice." Stern  and  realistic  modern  drama  does  not 
seem  to  them  ambitious — they  have  already 
played  "Julius  Caesar"  and  "The  Merchant  of 
Venice"  earlier  in  the  year — nor  does  it  appear  to 
impress  the  audience  as  high-brow,  or  "grim," 
as  the  critics  say.  They  listen  intently,  applaud 
now  and  then,  and  when  poor  Falser  is  crushed 
by  "justice"  in  the  end,  the  two  old  Germans 
from  round  the  corner  who  painted  the  scenery 
are  mopping  tears  from  their  eyes.  Such  a  scene 
— a  not  uncommon  one  in  settlement  houses — is 
merely  one  straw  to  show  the  direction  of  a  wind 
which  may  one  of  these  days  become  a  hurricane. 
What  do  the  "tired  business  men"  of  story  know 
of  the  intellectual  and  temperamental  back- 
ground of  youngsters  like  these,  who  have  the 

[375] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

sorrows  and  injustices  of  their  lives  worked  into 
their  very  flesh,  not  merely  in  the  actual  business 
of  living,  but  by  the  mordant  words  of  artists 
for  whom  musical-comedy  audiences  have  no 
time  or  taste? 


A    MISSIONARY 

TIRELESS  Sarah  Bernhardt  will  essay 
this  fall  a  comic  role  in  a  play  by  Tris- 
tan Bernard.  In  the  meantime  the  great  ac- 
tress is  not  averse  to  giving  interviews.  This  is 
what  she  says  of  America: 

Thirty-eight  years  ago  I  found  audiences  there  very 
attentive  and  full  of  respect  for  French  literature,  but  far 
from  familiar  with  it.  I  found  that  the  majority  followed 
my  plays  from  printed  books.  Now  almost  no  one  bothers 
about  books.  Everybody  seems  to  understand  French  and 
everybody  knows  the  French  authors.  I  am  proud  to  have 
had  a  modest  share  in  the  expansion  of  French  culture  be- 
yond the  sea. 

The  impression  is  more  flattering  than  just, 
though  there  is  talk  in  New  York  of  establishing 
a  theater  and  a  company  to  act  in  French  exclu- 
sively. It  is  true,  too,  that  our  audiences  are  bet- 
ter able  to  appreciate  a  French  play  than  they 
were  a  generation  ago,  and  Mme.  Bernhardt 
deserves  some  of  the  credit.    Many  the  playgoer 

[376] 


THE    PLAY-ACTORS 


who  has  brushed  up  his  French  by  reading  in  ad- 
vance of  the  performance  the  piece  he  was  to  see 
her  interpret;  many  the  more  proficient  linguist 
who  has  attended  her  plays  primarily  to  keep  his 
ear  attuned  to  the  "golden  voice"  that  has  worn 
so  surprisingly  well  and  to  the  beauty  of  the 
French  language  which  that  voice  has  embel- 
lished. Our  native  speech  and  drama  have  no 
such  foreign  missionaries.  Perhaps  Sir  Johns- 
ton Forbes-Robertson  comes  nearer  than  any 
other  Briton  to  rivaling  Sarah  in  the  art  of 
reading  verse. 


SARAH 

SARAH  BERNHARDT  isn't  just  an  ac- 
tress. She  is  an  Old  Master  in  that  other 
art — not  wholly  Yankee  after  all — "publicity." 
She  has  never  known  fear,  and  at  an  age  it  would 
be  ungallant  to  mention  she  has  voluntarily  un- 
dergone a  grave  operation.  Though  her  best 
work  for  the  stage  was  accomplished  a  dozen 
years  ago  at  the  least,  she  promises  to  return  to 
it — and  we  wish  Sarah  well.  On  or  off  stage, 
may  that  tomb  of  hers  on  Belle  Isle,  near  the 
coast  of  Brittany,  stand  empty  for  many  years 
to  come;  and  may  the  monument  for  the  tomb, 
to  which  she  has  given  her  vacation  hours — for 
she  is  sculptor  too! — wait  on  in  the  studio,  draped 

[377] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

in  its  modest  calico.  She  bridges  French  dra- 
matic history,  does  Sarah — and,  after  the 
younger  Dumas,  what  a  debt  do  not  Richepin 
and  Rostand  owe  to  her  voice  of  gold!  Just 
how  old  Sarah  is  we  refuse  to  whisper;  not  so 
old  as  the  ex-Empress  Eugenie,  whose  physi- 
cian tells  her:  "But,  your  Majesty,  you  have  al- 
ready lived  long  past  the  age  at  which  anyone 
ever  dies !"  Sarah  is  the  spirit  of  youth — its  fire 
and  energy  and  imagination.  She  has  carried 
beauty  of  word  and  gesture  to  the  Antipodes. 
When  De  Lesseps  started  work  at  Panama  a 
generation  ago,  Sarah  came  out  from  Paris  to 
the  French  theater  there,  to  glorify  that  fete  of 
Great  Expectations — tragically  betrayed.  If  we 
of  the  United  States  managed  ceremonies  as  well 
as  we  dig  canals,  we  should  be  giving  Bern- 
hardt a  warship  to  cruise  through  our  great 
ditch,  and  San  Francisco  would  build  a  theater 
named  for  her — a  theater  for  all  time,  like 
Sarah. 


HERE'S    HOPING 

THAT  delightful  and  gifted  man,  George 
Cohan,  is  soon  to  retire  from  the  night 
lights,  where  he  ties  knots  in  his  legs  and  wheezes 
out  the  zestful  lines  of  his  American  comedies. 
Recent  years  have  given  us  few  youths  of  such 

[378] 


THE     PLAY-ACTORS 


happy  promise.  He  has  caught  a  little  of  the  es- 
sential truth  about  national  character.  He  knows 
it  loves  to  wallow  in  the  exuberance  of  its  patriot- 
ism, and  then  on  a  sudden  to  dance  a  clog  in 
front  of  the  flag  for  which  it  wept.  He  knows 
how  it  acts  when  deeply  moved,  how  it  stutters 
for  words  and  selects  the  wrong  ones.  In  his 
"Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford,"  a  girl  reveals 
the  truth  of  her  womanhood,  and  the  astonished 
man,  whose  most  real  emotions  have  been 
reached,  shouts  out  that  she  is  "some  girl."  He 
means  all  that  a  man  in  love  means,  all  that  the 
poets  mean,  but  his  straitened  language  has  the 
barrenness  that  comes  where  there  is  little  emo- 
tional richness,  where  hurry  is  continuous,  and 
financial  success  the  test  of  worth. 


THE   WILD   WEST 

WEEN  we  were  much  younger  the  Wild 
West  gave  us  our  most  delicious  goose 
flesh.  African  and  Arctic  adventure  charmed 
our  imagination,  "Marco  Polo"  made  a  wonder- 
ful Sunday  book,  but  it  was  our  own  American 
pioneers,  the  mountain  men  who  toiled  with  ax 
and  battled  with  rifle  to  carry  the  East  into  the 
West,  these  and  the  Indians  they  fought  with, 
who  were  our  heroes.  When  we  played  outdoors 
we  played  Indians,  and  invented  dramas  of  bor- 

[379] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARE8 

der  life  in  the  patch  of  woods  just  off  the  old 
post  road  which  parallels  the  railway  line.  Wil- 
liam F.  Cody — "Buffalo  Bill" — was  meanwhile 
evolving  a  more  elaborate  pageant  of  border  life, 
staging  in  his  big  tents  not  the  aborigines  alone, 
but  cowboys,  stage-coach  holdups,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  And  now,  after  prospering  for  years 
— decades,  even — after  addressing  its  appeal  to 
the  young  and  old  of  this  nation  and  all  the  other 
nations,  too,  the  Buffalo  Bill  show  has  failed.  A 
change  has  come  over  us.  Newer  triumphs  have 
obscured  the  triumph  of  the  pioneers  over  wild 
nature.  Small  boys  read  less,  and  probably 
dream  not  at  all,  of  the  old  contest  between  red- 
skin and  paleface.  They  find  Fenimoee  Coopee 
dull.  Thy  are  absorbed  by  baseball,  by  mechan- 
ical toys  like  the  motor  cycle,  the  motor  boat,  the 
motor  car,  the  aeroplane;  but  they  lack  the  his- 
torical imagination.  We  are  sorry;  and  so,  no 
doubt,  is  Buffalo  Bill. 


WHAT   IS    IMMORAL? 

IF  a  play  or  a  book  or  a  form  of  amusement 
inflames  the  passions  and  encourages  vice,  it 
is  immoral.  If  it  makes  sin  repugnant  and  gives 
a  reaction  toward  clean  and  wholesome  living,  it 
is  moral,  no  matter  with  what  subject  it  is  deal- 
ing.   This  much  few  persons  will  dispute.    And 

[380] 


THE     PLAY-ACTORS 


yet  it  is  only  within  the  last  few  weeks,  and  after 
the  most  elaborate  maneuvering  for  a  theater, 
that  Brieux's  powerfully  prophylactic  play, 
"Damaged  Goods,"  has  been  permitted  to  pre- 
sent in  public  its  message  that  the  wages  of  sin 
is  death.  While  for  years,  in  every  city  in  the 
land,  from  every  music-hall  stage,  the  message 
has  been  sung  and  acted  that  immorality  is  a  joke 
and  the  wages  of  sin  is  joy.  There  has  recently 
appeared,  also  in  New  York,  a  short  sketch  en- 
titled "Any  Night."  It  is  a  painfully  realistic 
picture  of  the  sadness  and  sordidness  of  prosti- 
tution. It  is  not  high  art,  nor  does  it  give  any 
sociological  solution  to  the  problem  presented, 
but  it  would  be  a  callous  and  flippant  soul  in- 
deed who  could  leave  this  performance  for  that 
life  of  which  it  is  a  photograph.  Yet  the  pillars 
of  society  are  complaining  of  "Any  Night"  be- 
cause they  say  it  is  immoral.  And  if  a  similar 
play  were  put  on  in  a  popular-priced  theater 
for  all  the  public  to  see,  or  in  any  city  not  a 
metropolis,  the  thunders  and  lightnings  of  right- 
eous wrath  would  sweep  it  from  the  earth.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  program  especially 
suggested  that  daughters  be  left  at  home,  par- 
ents say  with  horror  that  the  young  folks  may 
drop  in.  Yet  these  same  persons  see  schoolgirls 
and  schoolboys  flock  to  the  nearest  music-hall 
show  by  hundreds,  and  never  turn  a  hair. 
In  the  light  of  recent  revelations  of  the  con- 

[381] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMARKS 

nection  between  the  police  and  immorality,  it 
is  not  surprising  that  they  should  be  loath  to 
allow  the  truth  to  appear.  What  is  amazing  is 
that  the  good  people  of  every  city  should  make 
so  slight  an  effort  to  put  a  stop  to  the  stimulation 
of  vice  which  is  carried  on  by  every  device 
of  music,  color,  and  glittering  seduction,  and  yet 
should  combine  in  a  complete  conspiracy  to  keep 
from  the  young  the  truth  about  the  sadness  of 
immorality  and  the  wages  of  sin.  What  a  com- 
ment this  is  on  the  intelligence  of  the  average 
middle-aged  father! 


WE    SEE    "HAMLET" 

FORBES-ROBERTSON'S  farewell  has 
filled  one  of  New  York's  too  numerous  new 
theaters,  just  as  it  will  fill  the  playhouses  visited 
"on  the  road."  His  repertory  includes  plays  by 
Jerome,  Kipling,  Shaw,  and  other  moderns,  no 
less  than  "Hamlet" — this  spiritual  actor's  highest 
achievement.  Here  is  a  figure  born  to  command 
— and  not  only  in  such  a  scene  as  that  with  the 
strolling  players  (where  some  prefer  Sothern), 
but  in  the  tragic  tenderness  of  the  interview  with 
Ophelia;  in  every  passage  expressive  of  poetry, 
philosophy,  courtliness,  or  gusty  whimsy.  How 
maudlin  seem  to-day  the  old-style  arguments: 
"Was  Hamlet  mad  ?"    Here  is  a  filial  Dane  who 

[382] 


THE     PLAY-ACTOR 


has  indeed  studied  at  Wittenberg  with  Horatio, 
who  is  indeed  "Prince  of  Denmark."  Three 
times  have  we  seen  Forbes-Robertson  in  the 
part — once  without  the  usual  "properties" — and 
each  time  his  performance  yielded  riches  for  re- 
membrance. Fate  is  a  member  of  the  cast  when 
this  actor  plays;  the  prince  among  men  never 
lets  us  forget  that  he  is  a  puppet  of  the  gods. 
On  the  last  occasion  a  young  girl  sat  by  our  side 
and  whispered  afterward :  "I  never  thought  of  it 
before  as  something  that  might  have  happened." 
Yet  this  is  no  "naturalistic"  rendering,  in  the 
sense  of  Novelli's  Shakespearean  degradations ; 
it  is  shot  through  with  the  spirit  of  high  romance. 
Forbes-Robertson's  intelligence  is  as  beautiful 
as  his  voice ;  and  he  stands  the  test  when  he  reads 
the  most  hackneyed  speeches  in  the  English 
language — "To  be  or  not  to  be,"  for  example. 
Forbes-Robertson  is  incapable  of  banality;  he 
brings  to  his  task  as  an  interpreter  of  great  dra- 
matic literature  distinction  and  nobility  of  char- 
acter. The  sex  plays  mark  a  passing  phase,  but 
New  York  crowds  not  to  musical  comedies  alone, 
and  to  crude  sensationalisms  like  "The  Fight" 
and  "The  Lure,"  but  to  this  "Hamlet."  The 
Sulzer  case  demonstrated  once  more  that  there  is 
something  rotten  in  the  state  of  Murphy — but 
since  New  Yorkers  appreciate  Forbes-Robert- 
son they  cannot  all  be  men  and  women  of  Go- 
morrah. 

[383] 


XXIII 
THAT   MARRIED    STATE 

A   CERTAIN   HUMAN   RELATION 

AN  old  law  Latin  proverb,  to  the  effect  that 
"he  who  sticks  in  the  letter  sticks  in  the 
bark,"  is  a  neat  description  of  much  pres- 
ent-day discussion  of  marriage.  In  these  books, 
plays,  and  tracts  we  get  everything  but  the  es- 
sentials of  the  matter.  The  ideal  of  marriage  is 
not  a  technically  equated  and  adjusted  contract 
from  which  either  of  the  parties  can  withdraw 
with  the  least  possible  loss.  That  would  not  be 
an  ideal,  but  merely  an  expedient.  Matrimony 
is  nothing  unless  it  is  everything,  unless  it  is 
based  on  "the  uncompelled  attraction  of  souls 
made  free."  Marriage  as  a  worldly  matter  is 
not  very  important.  It  is  important  only  when 
those  contracting  care  less  about  their  own  ad- 
vantage than  about  their  chance  to  live  and  prove 
themselves  in  duty  and  faithfulness  and  honor. 
If  a  husband  and  wife  are  not  united  to  help  one 
another  in  the  war  that  time  wages  against  the 
human  soul,  then  they  are  not  united  at  all,  and 
it  matters  little  what  happens  to  their  experi- 

[384] 


THAT     MARRIED     STATE 


ment  in  living  double.  The  State  and  the 
churches  are  less  interested  in  marriage  as  a 
decent  and  practical  method  of  increasing  the 
population  than  as  the  only  way  yet  discovered 
of  enlisting  the  strongest  passions  of  the  human 
heart  on  the  side  of  order  and  faith.  A  society 
which  does  not  achieve  this  will  fail.  Those  who 
consider  it  only  from  the  standpoint  of  selfish 
single  people  cannot  understand;  the  truth  is 
for  those  who  care  to  see. 


ALONG   TOWARD   JUNE 

MANY  a  peaceful  American  household  is 
to-day  confronting  the  two  great  prob- 
lems as  to  whether  the  long  black  coat  that  father 
had  built  for  his  own  wedding  can  be  forced  to 
fit  him  now  and  how  to  frame  up  that  wedding- 
bell  superstructure  of  green  and  white  which  is 
so  becoming  to  beet-blushing  bridegrooms. 
Spring  is  having  its  way  again,  and  "it's  as  easy 
now  for  hearts  to  be  true  as  for  grass  to  be  green 
or  skies  to  be  blue;  it's  the  natural  way  of  liv- 
ing." We  hope  so,  just  as  James  Russell 
Lowell  did  when  he  wrote  that.  The  statisti- 
cians say  that  about  every  twelfth  wedded  couple 
is  divorced,  so  our  friends'  chances  of  staying 
married  to  each  other  are  eleven  to  one.  This  is 
as  near  a  certainty  as  anything  life  affords,  and 

[385] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMAEKS 

any  one  pair  can  make  that  certainty  absolute  if 
they  will.  Our  schools  and  daily  life,  our  gos- 
pels of  efficiency  and  success,  all  tend  to  build  up 
a  sort  of  shell  of  selfness,  to  interest  people  in 
their  own  selves  and  in  their  own  doing.  But 
the  wisdom  of  marriage  consists  in  knowing  that 
there  are  others  and  in  maintaining  good  will  to- 
ward them.  We  don't  know  whether  the  diet 
sharps  agree  with  the  man  who  wrote  "Better  a 
dinner  of  herbs  where  love  is,"  but  the  old  say- 
ing is  everlastingly  right.  There  is  no  hardship 
in  life  that  mutual  good  will  cannot  make  blessed, 
and  there  is  no  ease  or  power  that  ill  will  cannot 
turn  to  bitter  ashes.  The  greatest  thing  on  earth 
is  to  be  understood  by  those  dear  to  you,  and  the 
world  loves  lovers  because  they  have  the  courage 
to  attempt  that  paradise.  And  we  do  hope  the 
bridegroom's  shoes  don't  squeak! 


ADOLESCENCE   AND    COLIC 

IN  the  "New  Republic,"  edited  at  New  York 
by  bright  young  men,  we  find  this  sentence 
in  an  essay  in  dramatic  criticism: 

In  a  civilization  where  the  divorce  between  morality  and 
instinct  is  pretty  nearly  complete,  where  vice  and  virtue 
are  neatly  tabulated,  and  the  sexes  decreed  to  observe  con- 
flicting egoisms  rather  than  accommodate  inconvenient  as- 
pirations and  possibilities,  it  is  well,  though  painful,  to 

[386] 


THAT    MARRIED     STATE 


have  a  woman  put  before  us  who  is  acknowledgedly  not 
persuaded  by  the  standards  which  as  children  we  ourselves 
were  led  to  adopt. 

The  main  idea  of  this  turgid  sentence  seems 
to  be  regret  that  America  is  so  backward  as  not 
to  regard  chastity  in  women  as  a  social  limita- 
tion. We  off  er  a  prize  of  one  Kansas  sunflower 
to  the  reader  who  can  as  briefly  condense  more 
half-baked  erudition  about  things  that  aren't  so, 
more  precious-precocious  banality,  more  evanes- 
cent nonsense  of  the  je-ne-sais-quoi  aroma.  The 
sentence  quoted  above  from  a  criticism  of  a  play 
written  round  a  woman  of  notorious  life,  a  play 
adapted  from  a  novel  of  modern  German  author- 
ship, would  hardly  be  worth  reproducing  here 
except  that  it  is  typical  of  quite  a  little  group 
of  intending  liberals.  We  like  so  many  things 
about  the  "New  Republic" — it  grieves  us  to  find 
these  occasional  signs  of  gastric  storms  in  the 
editorial  brain  center. 


FATHERHOOD  AND  MOTHERHOOD 

SOMEONE  ought  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
critics  of  the  modern  feminist  movement  to 
the  fact  that  our  civilization  believes  in  children 
being  born  into  families.  A  family  consists  of  a 
recognized  father,  a  mother,  and  a  child  or  sev- 
eral children.    Every  form  of  legal  and  social 

[387] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 

pressure  has  been  exerted  for  centuries  to  make 
this  the  only  accepted  mode  for  carrying  on  the 
race.  Its  success  is  evident  in  the  fact  that  the 
legitimate  children  are  vastly  more  numerous 
than  the  illegitimate — i.e.,  those  born  outside  the 
family  relation.  In  spite  of  all  this  we  are  hear- 
ing a  great  deal  nowadays  about  women  "shirk- 
ing motherhood,"  "refusing  motherhood,"  or 
"escaping  the  duty  of  motherhood,"  as  if  a  child 
were  a  sort  of  solitary  indulgence  on  the  part  of 
the  woman  concerned.  Anyone  who  knows  the 
facts  of  modern  life  knows  that  in  reality  there 
are  generally  two  people  responsible  for  the 
childless  family — a  man  and  a  woman.  If  any 
blame  is  to  be  assessed,  it  must  be  put  on  both 
of  them.  The  version  which  blames  the  woman 
only  is  no  more  modern  than  the  third  chapter  of 
Genesis.  If  we  are  to  do  any  clear  thinking  on 
this  important  subject,  it  is  time  we  began  to 
discuss  the  phenomenon  of  men  "shirking  fa- 
therhood," "refusing  fatherhood,"  and  "escap- 
ing the  duty  of  fatherhood."  This  correction  is 
true  not  only  with  respect  to  the  institution  of 
marriage,  but  also  with  respect  to  the  economic 
basis  of  family  life.  The  modern  development 
of  means  of  diversion  and  indulgence  has  af- 
fected men  as  well  as  women.  Successful  men 
are  quite  as  apt  to  be  absorbed  in  business  and 
pleasure  as  women  are  in  society  and  pleasure. 
They  avoid  and  neglect  the  family  with  the  same 

[388] 


THAT    MARRIED    STATE 


selfish  facility.  Both  have  made  the  same  tragic 
mistake  of  preferring  transient  gratifications  to 
the  life's  lasting  satisfactions.  Our  country  will 
not  escape  race  suicide  by  talking  as  if  it  were 
sex  suicide.  The  problem  is  to  impress  the  ideal 
of  family  life  upon  people  who  have  been  so  edu- 
cated and  trained  as  to  be  centered  wholly  on 
themselves. 


OF   LOVING   AND   TELLING 

IF  only  we  human  beings  were  obliged  to  ac- 
count for  every  idle  silence  at  least  as  surely 
as  we  pay  for  idle  words,  how  much  more  gen- 
erous we  should  be  with  our  expressions  of  praise 
and  affection!  In  our  Anglo-Saxon  tongue, 
originating  as  it  does  amid  the  snows  and  mists 
of  the  north,  there  is  a  spirit  of  reticence,  incom- 
prehensible to  southern  peoples,  of  withholding 
praise  till  after  the  death  of  its  object.  Who 
does  not  remember  the  pathetic  remorse  of 
Carlyle  that  he  was  not  more  lavish  in  mani- 
festing love  and  affection  to  his  wife  when,  after 
her  death,  he  discovered  how  much  and  vainly 
she  had  craved  them?  Ronsard,  the  great  star 
of  the  French  Pleiade,  protested  in  a  famous 
stanza:  "I  do  not  wish  that,  as  is  the  custom, 
incense  and  perfumes  and  essences  be  sprinkled 

[389] 


NATIONAL     FLOODMAEK8 

on  my  grave.    But  while  yet  in  life  I  will  anoint 
me  and  crown  me  with  flowers." 

Under  the  clear  skies  of  America  we  have  no 
need  of  conforming  to  Anglo-Saxon  reticence. 
We  are  a  people  composed  of  many  races  and, 
moreover,  a  people  of  the  sun — supported  by 
sharp  and  rigorous  winters  against  degeneration. 
In  all  the  relations  of  life,  of  husband  and  wife, 
as  of  parent  and  child,  of  employer  and  employed, 
of  citizen  and  public  servant,  a  little  more  loving 
and  a  little  more  telling  of  our  love  and  appro- 
bation would  only  enhance  the  joy  in  our  lives. 
Surely  the  new  year  is  still — and  always — young 
enough  to  support  a  resolution  upon  that  head. 


[390] 


NATIONAL    FLOODMARKS 


All  the  brief  essays  in  this  volume 
were  written  by  the  present  editor 
of  Collier's  or  by  the  members  of 
his  editorial  staff. 


[891] 


JIM  4- 194b 

NOV  2  3  1951* 

JAN  8  -  1952 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

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